


Snape: the Adeline Years

by AdelineGryffindor



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Apparating (Harry Potter), Asian Character(s), Battle of Hogwarts, China, Chinese Character, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, Chinese New Year, Death Eaters, Dementors, Depression, During Canon, Epic, F/M, Floo Network, Ghosts, Gryffindor, Hippogriffs, Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, Hogwarts Express, Hogwarts Prefects' Bathroom, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrations, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Injury, International Confederation of Wizards (Harry Potter), Loss of Virginity, Mahoutokoro (Harry Potter), Mentor Severus Snape, Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter), N.E.W.T.s | Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests, New Year's Eve, Original Mythology, Patronus, Poetry, Polyjuice Potion, Portkeys, Potions, Quidditch, Ravenclaw, Scottish Character, Second War with Voldemort, Severus Snape Lives, Sex, Slow Burn, Spells & Enchantments, Video Game: Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:14:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 45,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23415862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdelineGryffindor/pseuds/AdelineGryffindor
Summary: Bill Weasley nearly ruined Adi’s life--until the fearsome Potions Master changed it.In 1990, Cho Chang’s older cousin Adeline is not the only witch at Hogwarts to fall for the dashing, loaded Gringotts cowboy--with dire consequences. Now she must fight out of a fugue state to salvage her once-promising academic career with an unlikely ally in Professor Snape.Upon graduation Adi accepts a risky position on the International Task Force stationed in China, which has been plagued for centuries by both Muggle and Wizard political strife. A meteoric rise in diplomacy finally brings her back to Hogwarts in 1996 to visit as the newly-appointed British Ambassador to the United Chinese Nations (U.C.N.)There she finds a Severus Snape burdened by a Darkness both terrifying and alluring, and the charged, clandestine attraction between them is at last realized against an international backdrop of the Second Wizarding War. Though it may mean risking her very life, Adeline races to find a way to save the man who once was the only person who cared enough to save her.
Relationships: Bill Weasley/Original Female Character(s), Bill Weasley/Penny Haywood, Charlie Weasley & Original Female Character(s), Chiara Lobosca & Original Female Character(s), Cho Chang & Original Female Character(s), Cho Chang/Michael Corner, Harry Potter & Original Female Character(s), Nymphadora Tonks & Original Female Character(s), Rowan Khanna & Original Female Character(s), Severus Snape/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 67
Kudos: 40
Collections: Snape Bigbang 2019





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This novella was written for Snape Bang and illustrated by the wonderful Zephyr_Zult. Writing this pulled me out of a deep depression as I struggle with a chronic illness that left me, a former dancer, blind and in a wheelchair for several months. I have slowly been recovering through multiple rounds of chemo and I am forever grateful to the world of Harry Potter for giving me purpose in life again.
> 
> Adeline is an original character whose background shares much with my own. Please respect the integrity of my work, and my life stories, by not borrowing words, phrases, original characters & settings, or plotlines from this heartfelt passion piece. 
> 
> And mostly, I am grateful to you, the readers and fans of the Wizarding World, for living in this magical place together. 
> 
> With humility and gratitude,  
> the Author
> 
> Dedicated to Trout, who kept me anchored to this planet long enough to write this

There are people who walk into battle helms high and breastplates shined.

And there are those whose fight takes them deep into the Dark, where the mark of the enemy covers all glory and the filth of the fight is the only thing an outsider can see.

There is often no distinguishing line between bravery and survival, despite how badly people want there to be.

This, then, is not everyone’s story, nor would I ever wish it to be. This is the story of how darkness can give as much as the light, and that love sometimes evades death by mere fractions of a second.

And finally, this is a story that warns not to dismiss the ugliness in people, but to embrace it as your own, for that is truly where you will find peace.

I am Adeline, and this is my story.


	2. Fugue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part I: Intoxicated
> 
> (This is a 3 Part novella, which I've chosen to publish as one complete work, rather than a collection, both for continuity and you rockstar fic beasts who can read a full work in one fell swoop.)

**Part I: Intoxicated**

March 1991

Ever since I found out about Bill, I haven’t been okay.

I couldn’t hide it any longer: everything that had happened between us that I’d guarded so carefully.

It showed in the set of my rounded shoulders as I sat in the dining hall, back to the fire, cold inside no matter how it blazed. I didn’t pick at my pork chop. I didn’t see it at all. I just sat frozen, while all around me dishes clanged and kids called across the tables.

I sat for hours in the common room, blank-eyed. Mates came in and out, the portrait swinging constantly as the extrovert house never stood still.

All but me.

The only thing moving in my corner was my shadow flickering in the firelight against the crimson wallpaper.

They thought I’d gone daft. I could hear them. At first in whispers, all furrowed brows and real concern. I’d always been so hardy, and brazen. Such a Gryffindor.

It was frightening for them, especially the younger ones, to see their prefect this way. Not that I was any longer. I’d been stripped of my badge weeks ago. And now, I was in danger of failing out entirely. I’d cocked up any chance at passing a single N.E.W.T.

Without N.E.W.T.s, the Ministry was out as well. Oh sure, there were administrative jobs I could take, especially with my O.W.L.s (I only had so many because Bill did and I, his satellite, must follow his orbit.) But my Edinbourgeois parents were pureblood in magic _and_ Chinese. It was shameful enough what happened to Jacob; I was their last hope for respectability, and a filing clerk position wouldn’t in the least do.

A few of the girls from my dormitory approached in the early days. They plied me with smuggled treats from Honeyduke’s and told me my unwashed hair was pretty. One placed an actual Cruppy on my lap, spilling the tussle of fur and wet tongue onto my inert form. I let it lick my expressionless face. It probably liked the salt from my tears dried long-ago and never rinsed off. My complexion wasn’t the best at the moment.

Finally, even Rowan gave up.

“You know I’m no good at this,” she’d whispered. “I never know what to say. I reckon I’ll simply…listen.”

But there was nothing to hear. Even had I wanted, there was nothing to speak. I couldn’t find words to fit the shape of it, and any that I conjured just fell into the blackness that seemed to have taken up residence within. Rowan had put a tremulous hand on mine, tentative as always. For years I’d considered her my best mate, but she was a difficult one to get close to. It wasn’t her fault. Khanna Grove sat on the outskirts of the New Forest. Even before Lockhart’s trash “memoir”, New Forest was more foreboding than our Forbidden one. Muggles couldn’t find it; wizards didn’t want to. Rowan grew up with trees and their little stick dwellers for playmates, her only exposure to the outside world through books and whenever her parents tuned in to Wizarding Wireless. Ashok wasn’t born until Rowan was almost ten; he was barely speaking complete sentences when she packed off to Hogwarts.

I had been her first friend.

It was like finding the other end of a magnet. We clung to each other - she out of a loneliness she hadn’t known she felt, I out of a yearning for a ghostly figure I only faintly remembered. Like the Khanna siblings, Jacob was ten years older than me.

What they never tell you about wizarding families is unless you’re a Weasley, many of us grow up only children or the equivalent of. Wizards are rare; most purebloods like the Malfoys have only one a generation. Families with Muggle blood have a better chance of children near in age. Straight Muggleborns like the little Creevey boys are sometimes only two years apart. You can see it in their closeness.

Even if siblings are only five years apart, they’re still quite young when school separates them. Ashok is shy when his stranger sister goes home for Christmas. In the same way, I barely knew Jacob.

Everyone is so overjoyed to receive their Hogwarts letter because we’re starved for companions our age. Some students go wild with play, setting off so many dungbombs the faculty considered restricting our access to Zonko’s. When I became a prefect, I almost agreed.

Rowan was never a troublemaker. Maybe my escapades proved too much for her. Maybe our differences were insurmountable.

All I know is, if we had stayed close, maybe Bill wouldn’t have happened.

Maybe she’d be able to reach me now. But it was too late. I hadn’t talked to her in that way for too long, and I couldn’t do it now.

So eventually, she gave up too. And then it was just me and my shadow, looming like a dementor holding guard over me against the increasingly open chatter about my psychological state.

“She shouldn’t be here.”

“Send her to St. Mungo’s already.”

“I had an aunt who was barking. It started like this.”

 _Look here,_ I wanted to say, _I’m dressed. I use the lavatory like a human. I eat…sometimes. What more do you want from me?_

But I continued to say nothing.

I wasn’t mental. Just heart shocked.


	3. Bill

October 1990

Bill was meant to be a banker. No one knew how much he hated being poor; he was always so cool, self-assured. It was an exterior that eventually became him, the way his personality grew to match the gaudy earrings and exotic creature skin boots.

I was there when he bought his first pair. He’d invited me to see his new flat in Chelsea and I snuck out to London during a Hogsmeade outing. It was my introduction to the posh life…and the new Bill.

If Bill was made for finance, West London in 1990 was made for Bill. He’d later move to Camden to stay in accordance with his punk rebel image, but in the 90s, Chelsea was the playground for banker boys with dosh to spare. It was fancy, but still affordable enough that a young man making his way in the world could eat and drink high, Muggle or magical.

To be nineteen, handsome, and the hottest new curse-breaker at Gringotts. I suppose I would have thrown around money too.

Are you surprised? Did you think he would send every spare copper back to the Burrow? Or that he’d stay there when he wasn’t adventuring in Egypt?

I’d thought that when I’d gone to see him. “What are you doing with a place in town?” I asked, after I’d stepped wonderingly into his modern flat. “Are you back so often?”

Bill shrugged in the easygoing way he’d come to be known by at Hogwarts. “I split time with another bloke at the bank.” That’s what he’d been calling it since he got hired. The bank. That one down the street guarded by a gargantuan Ukrainian ironbelly and holding all the gold in the entire wizarding world. That’d be the one.

“He’s in Tanzania most of the year. Fun chap. You’d like him. Real laddish.”

“Don’t see why you’d get on then,” I said airily.

He gave his lopsided grin and rubbed the golden-red hair across his chin. He’d begun growing a circle beard and it added a gruff swagger to his expressions.

“Go on then. I’m not a lad, am I?”

I tilted my head at his expensive place. “You’re absolutely correct. The term I was looking for is knob-head, if I’m not mistaken.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “That’s what I love about you, Adi. You keep my hands clean.”

Though he tossed the phrase out so casually, I glanced away. It was too close to where my own heart lay.

* * *

Ethiopian hadn’t yet become the up-and-coming cuisine with the fashionable set, but Bill had a knack for trends before they appeared. From his flat, we crossed Hyde Park into the immigrant neighborhoods of North-West London. In the dim restaurant, we sat knee-to-knee around the low, woven table, me pretending to know what I was doing with the _injera_. Between bantering with the owners, Bill showed me how to scoop the lentils with the spongey bread.

“The best part is at the end when all the juices have soaked in,” he said, pointing to the _injera_ that lined the circular tray.

I ate the lamb stew and didn’t know what to say. He was so comfortable in the Muggle world. I knew his father worked in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, but the Weasleys kept staunchly within the magical community like all the families in the Twenty-Eight. Mr. Weasley may have been fascinated by Muggles and their technology, but this was different. What Bill had wasn’t a professional interest, it was a familiarity—a _comfort._ Almost as if he lived among them.

This familiarity with the non-magical world became increasingly apparent when he led us to Edgware Road. The street teemed with restaurants where patrons blew hookah smoke into the air and markets burst with fruit stands and bushels of powdered confections.

“Where are we?” I asked, walking briskly to keep up with his long stride.

“Little Arabia,” he said with a grin, “Best part of London.”

_Is it?_ I thought. _Yet you don’t live_ here _…_

At one of the markets, Bill grabbed a small bag and filled it with a scoopful of the powdery candies. He barely glanced at the Muggle money as he shelled out the exact change.

He handed me the paper pouch. I carefully put a sweet in my mouth and chewed. The powdered sugar squeaked between my teeth. Aromatic rose and orange blossom burst in my mouth.

“Turkish delights,” he said.

They were divine.

Nearly the whole bag and a slight stomachache later, I followed Bill into a narrow shop decorated in deep jewel tones that reminded me of the Gryffindor common room. The tapestries lining the walls muffled our voices and made it feel as if we were stepping from the brisk autumn evening into a warm cave.

The man behind the counter glanced at Bill, gave a barely perceptible nod, and looked back down at his paper.

Bill strode straight through the shop to the back, where a beaded curtain blended into the tapestries. He slipped a hand between the beads and held them aside. It was almost entirely black beyond the curtain.

I hesitated, looking at him. Without breaking my gaze, he flashed me an intriguing grin and I felt my face warm. I took a breath and stepped under his arm into the darkness.

Heady smoke wafted from a censer somewhere to my left. A waterfall of beads clacked softly as Bill slipped in behind me. We stood unmoving in the dark, letting our eyes adjust. The sounds of the street were completely muffled. In the unearthly cocoon of silence I heard him breathing, slow and even. Countless times I’ve hugged him, yet here in the dark, not touching, he felt so very, very close.

Then I felt his hand on the small of my back. I don’t know that he’d ever touched me this way, slightly too familiar to be friendly, too intimate to be brotherly. He lingered there and, just when it was about to feel too long, leaned down and said, “Shall we?”

I felt his coat brush against me as he stepped forward. I still couldn’t see farther than my own nose and I was about to protest when a snapping sizzle sounded across the room. At the same time Bill murmured, “Lumos,” and a glow appeared at the end of his wand.

A man stood at the other side of the small room holding a long Muggle contraption to the wick of an oil lamp. He and Bill looked at each other, faces illuminated by their respective sticks, and burst into hearty laughter.

The lamp hissed aflame. The man clicked off his Muggle lighting wand and said, “Put that away, crazy wizard. Such a show-off.”

Bill tucked his wand back into the shoulder holster given to all Gringotts workers with security clearance. He did like to show off his quick draw - but how did this man know?

_Is he a squib?_

As if he read my mind, Bill turned to me. “Adeline, may I introduce you to my fine Muggle friend, Sadiki.”

I couldn’t keep the alarm out of my expression.

“Delighted to meet you.” Sadiki came forward and extended his hand as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

I remembered myself in time and stammered, “Pleased to meet you.” We shook.

“You have something for me, mate?” Bill asked with a glint in his eye.

“Yes, friend. It is here.” Sadiki crossed to a series of curio cabinets to our left. Using a key hanging around his neck, he unlocked one of the glass doors. From the bottom shelf he removed a pair of boots and held them up to the light. The scales caught the lamplight, smooth and thick at the same time.

Dragon hide.

Bill rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

“Have a seat,” Sadiki said.

Bill eagerly perched on a wooden stool and removed his shoes. Sadiki handed him the first boot.

Bill took it like it was Merlin’s book, gingerly running his fingers over the shimmering scales. He brought it to his nose and inhaled.

“You’re lucky I didn’t try it on first,” Sadiki said.

“I should make sure we’re not the like size next time,” Bill replied. He slipped each one on, stood and sighed. “Like wearing a cloud,” he said, wriggling each foot.

They were an entrancing, deep green colour, with an internal luminescence that reminded me of the Black Lake. The longer I stared, the more I felt as if I would be drawn into the very skin.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Romanian Longhorn.” Bill said it as casually as if telling me the weather.

I gaped. “The endangered ones?”

He winked. “Don’t tell Charlie.”

I looked to Sadiki but the shopkeeper was suddenly busying himself with straightening the rest of the contents in the curio.

Bill began extensive bartering with Sadiki that bordered on aggressive and concluded with both men shaking their heads in grumbling disappointment. He paid in Muggle currency again and, after Sadiki handed him the wrapped package, the two men were all grins as they clapped each other on the back like long-lost brothers. Bill dropped the package into a tiny pouch hanging from his belt that had obviously been bewitched, as it disappeared instantly inside, and we left back through the storefront.

“Why…what is…” I wasn’t sure what question to ask.

“Ministry’s considering a reclassification of Longhorn to Class C Untradeable. It’s a bit too dicey even for shops in Knockturn Alley to carry at the moment. But the Muggle market is quite unaffected.”

_You mean the contraband market_ , I thought.

“It’s not illegal,” Bill said brashly, once more responding to my unsaid thought. “You know our kind, jittery lot. This is just easier, until—” he waved his hands dismissively “—the Ministry sort themselves out.”

Then he gave that grin.

Words truly don’t do justice to this phenomenon. Sure, Bill is handsome, with those sharp cheekbones and those almost obscenely curvy lips. But it’s not his looks, otherwise his allure would be tempered substantially by his gaunt figure. He may have hopped a broom for a few rounds of Quidditch at the Burrow, but he didn’t play at school, and was never seen by the Lake with the other boys, wrestling each other or throwing about bewitched medicine balls. A man of six foot one doesn’t normally carry that kind of thinness well. Yet Bill has never been called beanpole by any student at Hogwarts, nor by his rowdy brothers.

It’s the Bill Effect.

Whereas most boys who’ve shot up before their classmates stoop from gangly embarrassment, Bill’s slouch came across as a side effect of an unhurried stroll across campus that always brought him to class on time. He never showed his spindly arms; the most we’d see were shirtsleeves rolled up the forearms so that his slim wrists and thin fingers made his spellwork appear even more elegant.

And that smile. Somehow a pale, skinny, awkwardly bony lad had the entire school mesmerized and I blame the smile. When Bill smiled at you, you felt like The Weird Sisters had come to town. It’s a feeling somewhat akin to hearing your name announced on the wireless, while catching the winning Snitch and getting Outstandings on every single O.W.L., all at the same time.

With Bill Weasley turning his scruffy, rakish grin at me, it was easy to push aside everything I’d witnessed that night, the indiscretion with the Longhorn boots, the cavalier way he wielded his wizardry. It would be the first time of many.


	4. Hallow

Halloween 1990

It was Bill’s idea to go as wizards.

To a starstruck teen who had never been in love, when Bill promised to take me out for a real Halloween, I was sneaking off grounds without a second thought. As Head Boy he had learned all the tricks for getting out of trouble, particularly with a Gryffindor Headmaster in tenure. We had broken so many rules together already; I trusted everything he said.

Thus on a Tuesday night, instead of at the Halloween Feast in the Great Hall, I was at Bill’s flat practicing _Aurantillious_ to take on streets of London town. Sparks as orange as Bill’s hair poured from the tip. Though I was of age and the trace had long come off me, I almost never used magic outside of school or my own house. My parents would have locked me in my room for a decade if they knew I was planning to pull a wand in Muggle public, much less perform continuous magic sure to violate the Statute.

Bill waved away my worry. “Bah. There’ll be so much spellwork tonight, one harmless trick is hardly worth notice. _Multicorfors!”_

He ran his wand over my school robes and they zipped into a somewhat scandalous Muggle stereotype of a witch’s dress.

“Bill!” I clapped a hand over the low bodice.

“Sorry,” he laughed without sounding the least bit sorry. “Becomes you, though,” he added with a cheeky wink.

I looked away to hide my smile. Cheeks warm, I redid the transfiguration to include a securely-pinned shawl.

Bill put the finishing touches on his grey three-piece suit, strapping his shoulder holster over the vest. I watched as he donned the blazer and folded an eggplant handkerchief smartly into the breast pocket.

“My tie straight?” He jut his chin out casually.

Pretending I didn’t feel like a child playing grownup, I stepped forward and reached up to his tie. The top of my hair barely grazed his beard. Now that he was in Thebes months at a time, he’d let his hair grow out and his inflection slide into a rugged drawl like some Outback jackaroo. Between his spicy scent of desert wind and his newfound swagger, I felt myself slipping under Bill’s easy mesmerism.

“Off we go,” Bill said, proffering his arm. 

Out in the night, air thick with dizzy revelry, time itself seemed under a slowing charm. As blootered Muggles buffeted us, Bill slipped a leisurely hand around mine and led me through the press. His slim fingers were cold, but I didn’t care. Every second I held Bill Weasley’s hand was immortalized in my mind; every time he grinned down at me, face inches from mine as the crowd sealed us snugly together, froze into a memory of the best night of my young life.

“Ready?” he said and raised his wand into the air. I followed suit and, together, we shouted, “ _Aurantillious Maxima_!”

Orange sparks soared into the sky, dual streams arcing across each other and showering harmlessly upon the Muggles, who shrieked in delight. It set them into a round of cheers and song as they threw their own lighted baubles and plastic neon sticks into the air, swaying against us in a sea of carousing glory, sweeping us into their joyful tide as Bill smiled at me with a touch of affection, and a smear of mischief, then leaned down and put his lips to mine.

* * *

31 October 1979

I’d never celebrated an All Hallow’s Eve until Hogwarts. I wasn’t even allowed out guising as a child, even as my Muggle neighbors made their way down the pavement in ridiculous ripped clothes and greasepaint to perform their boring songs and jigs at each door.

“It’s insulting,” my dad once said, drawing the curtains together. He threw up a cloaking charm over our house before a Muggle dressed as a particularly ugly caricature of a kung fu fighter could skip up to it.

My parents did fairly well with their immigrant and Scottish work ethic, but the UK in the 70s and 80s was not an easy place for minorities. ‘Oriental’ was one of the nicer terms Muggles called us. When it came time for my parents to move from Edinburgh to the suburbs, it took them a while to find our house. Many a time my mother with her round belly was turned away by signs in windows that read ‘No Coloureds’. They finally had to go through the Ministry, who sent an Irish Obliviator by the name of Lobosca to settle the matter.

It was this undercurrent of racial tension, in addition to the wizarding secrecy that led my family to isolate ourselves to the limited magical community. Wizards didn’t use racist epithets; that wasn’t the blood type they cared about.

In that respect, we were as established as a wizarding family could be. There have been Chang wizards since the Xia Dynasty. My parents always claimed to be proud wizards, yet the secrecy was stifling. Of course I didn’t understand. They didn’t tell me we were at war.

It was the late 70’s, the height of the First Wizarding War. My parents thought if they kept it from me, I wouldn’t have to spend each day nervous and fearful like they did, waiting for coded dispatches from the Ministry to the Edinburgh branch where my father translated them for the officials. My parents waited, he translated, but still the dread Lord could not be found. Their anxiety was palpable, and it cast a disquieting tone to home life. It was probably why Jacob didn’t return much once he left for Hogwarts. My parents didn’t push him to either. It was safer there.

At least that’s what they believed. But he disappeared from Hogwarts. Hallow’s Eve was the last night anyone saw him there. Yet another thing my parents had to find some way to hide from me, while they sunk deeper into their own silent panic that somehow the War had swallowed their only son.

I already knew the truth—it was my fault.

No one knows this and I may never tell: on the night Jacob disappeared, he came to see me.

It was through the fire. I was the only one home; I think he knew that. I was in the kitchen when the crackling in the fireplace emitted a roar. I ran into the parlor as fast as my six-year-old legs could take me to see the flames go green and my brother step out.

My greatest lament is the fallibility of memory, particularly that of children. I want to remember every last detail of my brother, but all I have are snippets and snatches: his ripped coat and dirty hair. Wild words I didn’t understand, words of war and Dark. The kiss on my forehead that left a smudge of soot I didn’t want to wash off until my mother dragged me crying from the closet hours later and flicked a wand at my face, gone spare that I had been playing in the fireplace.

Five final minutes were all I had with my idol, the dashing young man with eyes like mine and hunger for more.

For months after I watched the fireplace, believing as only a child does that he would return. He couldn't be gone. People didn't just disappear into thin air.

But he was and he had done.

It was Jacob who told me to say the name Voldemort.

“Don’t be scared little Vipertooth,” he had said, using my nickname after the tiniest dragon. “You’ll be a Gryffindor too. Don’t ever be scared.”

But I was scared. All the time. I held fear in my fist instead of my brother’s hand. Where he should have been there to guide me, there was only my own breath, coming shorter than I wanted it to.

So I learned to put it to the side and do it anyway. I learned to use it to fuel me into action; reckless, impulsive action. I was always on the verge of either failing Flying class or earning top marks for the brazen stunts and hairpin dips. I led my friends into the hunt for the Cursed Vaults that put so many of them into the Hospital Wing. I’d taken up his search as the only way to stay close to him, and I chased his memory like it was air in a locked cell.

It took years to realize I sought this phantom face without knowing I did, or who I did it with. As long as I was running after something, I could stay running from the six-year-old’s surety that if she had only stopped him that night, her brother would not be gone.


	5. Adenium

The world disappeared as I kissed Bill. Even when he finally pulled away, I heard nothing. I wobbled on my feet when he let me go, glad the boisterous throng masked my reaction. 

It was twenty minutes to curfew when Bill checked his pocket watch. Prefects had an extra hour within castle walls for patrol, but we still had to walk back from Hogsmeade. We ducked out of the horde into an alleyway occupied only by an amorous couple, and Bill offered his arm.

We appeared behind the Hog’s Head and I doubled over. Bill peered around the corner while I clutched my middle, waiting for the nausea to subside. Thankfully I kept my stomach. I was a famously shoddy apparator, never splinching but taking twice to gain my license and beating Charlie Weasley in distance failed. When I’d recovered, we set off for the castle.

The professor at the Front Gate was already locking the entrance by the time we hurried up to it. The night had been a pinnacle of happiness and I hadn’t a care at all until we reached the gates and a scowling Snape.

Even from its great height of elation, my mood dropped.

“Evening, Professor,” Bill said, as if they’d come upon each other on a customary stroll.

“Chang,” Snape said as if Bill hadn’t spoken, “I do not recall there being a Hogsmeade stop on Prefect patrol.”

“My fault, Sir—” Bill began.

“If that is so, I would imagine then that you already know how long it takes to walk a witch back to the castle.”

Bill wasn’t smiling anymore. “My mistake,” he said with a hint of tightness.

“30 points from Gryffindor—Prefect infraction.”

My heart sank.

“50 points from Gryffindor for endangerment of a student—” he looked at Bill “—by alumnus.”

Bill snorted. “I’m more than capable of defending her from outside threat.”

“Would that an outside threat be _all_ there was to defend against.” He turned his glower on me. “Chang. Stop dawdling.”

Snape cracked the gate just enough for me to duck under his arm and banged it shut again.

* * *

Bill left for Thebes again the next day, and stopped back only for Christmas at the Burrow. In my bedroom at my parents’ house, I opened a package that smelled vaguely of incense. It reminded me of the night Bill bought boots from Sadiki. Nestled inside a plain box was a miniature glass bottle of sand.

“Her name is _Ade_ ,” read the card.

Bemused, I pulled the cork and was about to sniff the sand, when the bottle trembled. I set it on my table and watched with astonishment as a vibration in the sand turned into a miniature whirlpool, from which a hardy little stalk shot out. It crept to the top of the bottle and put forth a spiral of leathery, oblong leaves. A tiny bud shook violently until at last a flower burst forth with five triumphant petals of a shocking pink hue.

Mouth still open, I grabbed my copy of Goshawk’s Guide to Herbology, thumbed uselessly through it, smacked my head and opened Magical Desert Plants and Their Properties instead.

_Adenium magicum_ , I read. _An ever-blooming desert rose._

Desert rose. Ade.

I was in love.

* * *

I had no idea what to expect next. Would he write me love notes by owl? Were we boyfriend and girlfriend?

My parents had a Beedle the Bard-tale courtship. Macon Tsun Chang, after receiving five Outstanding N.E.W.T.s at Hogwarts, became the first East Asian to work at the Ministry for Magic in 1958. He started at the Scotland headquarters as an assistant, until it was discovered that he was also fluent in Mandarin _and_ Taiwanese; he became the translator to the United Chinese Nations in short order.

For a year, he telegraphed messages back and forth with the U.C.N. translator who had an intriguingly droll sense of humor. It wasn’t easy to convey any type of humor in a telegraph, but somehow this translator infused such personality into their messages that Macon began to be able to track what sort of day they had through the dry, minimal dots and dashes. He imagined her life outside of her office (for he had begun to envisage her a “she”), what she ate, how she dressed, whom she lived with. He tried to convey as much of himself into his messages as well, but he wasn’t a particularly emotional or effusive person to begin with. His parents had been concerned with propriety, and as the only Chinese wizard at Hogwarts his entire seven years, he’d had to work harder and do twice as much to prove himself. As the elder Chang son, he was expected to set an upright example for Cho’s father, who was eight years younger and becoming quite a boisterous Scotsman.

On the other side of the world, Syringa Camellia Su longed for adventure. She had grown up in a bucolic village outside Kaohsiong, Taiwan, the only wizarding family for kilometres. After graduating Mahoutokoro with top marks, she became a secretary in the typing pool at U.C.N. Headquarters in Taipei, where it was discovered that she was also fluent in English, Taiwanese _and_ Japanese. She became the translator to Britain in short order.

Life was very simple for the insulated country witch. She amused herself by crafting jocular messages to her counterpart in Britain. She was sure he was some stuffy Englishman rolling his eyes, but he seemed to enjoy her daily diversions.

Then one day the telegraph sprang to life. It was not a scheduled communique, and she leapt to the machine to begin transcribing. But no emergency signal preceded the message. It was very short, although it followed protocol.

_My name is Macon._

She read it several times before its meaning sunk in. Then, with a rush of excitement, she typed out:

_Syringa_

Then hastily added:

_Su_.

It escalated quickly after that. Macon turned out to be indeed stuffy. Still, he was trim, dark and handsome. And his stern Northern Chinese demeanor held some sort of attraction for my impressionable, romantic mother.

Daughters seek their fathers, Muggles say. Only years after Bill would I remember this.

* * *

The Seeker

by Adeline Chang

February 1991

There is a moment

a millisecond

after you see the Snitch 

before you turn your broom

when you cut your eyes

to the opposing Seeker to see

if he’s spotted it too

and he has

and you lock eyes

and your heads tilt like synchronized swimming

As you both lean

Your bodies following

a balletic cascade

With the other seeker

a mirror

and it feels like forever

until your brooms follow

Then all at once it snaps back into real time

\- no -

faster

And you’re flying

Faster

As fast as

you’ve never flown before

But it still takes forever

You’re gaining

Gaining

Still so far

And all of a sudden you’re there

And the last few feet slow

Widen

To an infinite chasm

you’ll never reach with those short stubby arms your brother teased you for

-“Tyrannosaurus”- he called you

After the Muggle lizard who couldn’t fly

But you could fly

And in the end, it was he who made sure you learned it

-“Go little Viper, go”-

He whispered in your ear as you balanced on his too-big broom

Preparing

You to take over

When his own Seeking dreams ended

ignominiously

With expulsion

-“the smallest, the fastest”-

Vipertooth

Human-eater

Survivor of the Dragon Pox

-“you can do this”-

In your ear

You hear him

-“fly”-

But it’s only wind

It’s only wind

He’s not here

He’s not here

And the other Seeker is

So close you can feel the heat from his mean body

You know he’d kill you if he could

The angry little boy from the goody-two-house

But you’re a Viper

And you’re going to sink your Tooth into the golden ball

-“the smallest”-

And you stretch that short little arm

-“the fastest”-

At the last second

you do the two things that frighten your chasers to no end

you close your eyes

And you take off your glove

In the dark, with the cold air on your hands,

you hear nothing

Not his voice

Not the wind

Not the ugly breath

so close to you.

You just reach

You stretch

Just a little more

And

At the tip of your fingers

It’s there

Yes

It’s there

It’s there!

And it’s in your hand

The wings slicing against your frozen fingers

right before you close down around them

And the angry little Seeker slams into your side

And you roll off your broom

Clutching gold

Hard

and round

and cold.

That was what Halloween with Bill had felt like.


	6. Feruvium

January 1991

It’s not true that I forgot everything during that winter into spring. All the lessons, perhaps. Basic hygiene. But it was only because my mind replayed the same scenes over and over, so that there was not room for much else.

I didn’t mean to stop speaking to anyone. I was simply too busy remembering his cold hands on me, raising gooseflesh.

The first feel of a mouth on my breast.

The thrust, its shocking fullness, like plunging into the Black Lake and meeting the monster there.

The initial breath-stealing sting of pain, then Bill reaching between us, his hand smeared with salve, massaging it around where we met, coating himself as he withdrew, rubbing his fingers against me one by one, the way you would stroke a pet.

His eyes meeting mine, his sweat dampening his hair into burnt umber, his lips pinker than ever.

The concave, almost hollow chest, the pale skin reddening with his effort.

The way he leaned into me, and finished.

I knew nothing. Then in one night I knew many things.

* * *

March 1991

Little Cho had entered Hogwarts last September and was now my height, a tall five foot two for an eleven-year-old. That Aberdeen air.

I was glad she had been sorted into Ravenclaw like our fathers, and didn’t have to see me unwashed and nearly catatonic. She was so popular already, trailed by half her house and tied to the hip with that pug-nosed Edgecombe girl. She was having her first year out of Only Child Land and I was glad she was too busy to notice I was hardly around. My reputation wasn't great by the time of her entrance, even before this fugue. I know my aunt and uncle had told her not to follow my path. We were the Bad Changs—the shameful son and the rebellious, thoughtless daughter. The Chang clan at large wanted Cho to do better. For everyone's sake, so did I.

* * *

January 1991

We were smarter this time, at least about the curfew.

It was a Hogsmeade Saturday that he came to side-along apparate me. I’d finally gained my license, but I was still so piss-poor at showing up in the correct town that it wasn’t worth the attempt.

To his flat and to the deed done.

He had me back on the High Street in time to bring up the stragglers before supper.

* * *

14 February 1991

It turned out Bill _was_ in London often enough to warrant a place in town. He just didn’t want me to know.

I wasn’t expecting him to be home when I rang his fireplace. My plan, which had seemed epically romantic at the time, was to call in first since I couldn’t recollect whether he had a grate. If he didn’t, I would pop in, leave my gift and be out before the ash settled.

It would be perfect. I’d practiced for a week to charm a slip of parchment to bloom, when picked up by the recipient, into a fluorescent replica of an _Adenium_ that revealed my message. It was one of the most complicated bits of magic I had accomplished. Had I shown it to the professors, perhaps I would have graduated on the spot.

It was Tonks who tipped me off to the fireplace in the kitchens, which could be used if one were particularly kind to the elves.

“Wouldn’t they be commanded to report students?”

“Sure. That’s why you’ll need to _Crinus Muto_ and _Colovaria_ every’fing,” she said in her Cockney accent. “I mean it, EVERY-fing. Eyes, hair, skin, change your robes out. Do me a favour, not Hufflepuff, please.”

“Ah. Metamorph my non-magus self.”

“You’ve caught on, mate. Oh! Nearly forgot. You can only Floo out of ‘ogwarts. You’ll have to Floo to, I dunno…the Hog’s Head and walk back. Part of the protection.”

I ended up looking like a Slytherin Rowan, but it was too late, I was already in the kitchens when I caught sight of my reflection in a giant copper kettle.

“Bill Weasley’s flat,” I yelled over the racket.

There was no grate, but Bill had an enchantment in place. Of course. Why would I think otherwise of a Gringotts curse-breaker. It caused a warp, like seeing through curved glass so that I was sure my sight was deceived.

But as I watched, the vision didn’t change. Bill sat on his sofa in the scud, wearing nothing but the fang dangling from his ear. Two Muggle lasses knelt before him. It became the image I couldn’t get out of my head: their blonde heads moving alongside each other. His moan when their lips met at the top, a sound both approving and expectant.

Over and over my mind’s eye would watch this scene. The way he leaned back, letting them do the work. That self-deserving grin, cruel in its unbearable sexiness.

Again and again, I would see one of them pick her head up and slur through fuschia-smeared lips, “Do the trick!”

And Bill lazily picks up the handkerchief and tosses it in the air, where it transforms into a bird that flits once around the room to the girls’ squeals before it floats back to the sofa as a gauzy square again.

“Now, darling,” Bill then says, “do your trick.”

They’re already arranging themselves as I pull my head out of the fire, calling the first place I can think of and tumbling out of the Three Broomsticks to a frowning Madame Rosmerta.

I hardly remember mumbling an apology before stumbling out onto the street, desperate to destroy the paper flower before anyone could read the message and find out why I couldn’t apparate or portkey anymore.


	7. Scorn

May to June 1989

Given his work, his epicurean habits, his London haunts, his dalliance with, well—me, I thought Bill had some sort of fetish. But it was your typical tall, thin blonde all the way, starting at Hogwarts.

Bill had been sly as a fox with the schoolgirls; even when it had been two at once, never the one was wiser. He’d had the Head Boy title to uphold and he did it impeccably…almost. 

Except the afternoon of the Quidditch friendly. It had been most brutal. Orion scheduled it precisely for this reason. While Skye came off as the tough one with her husky laugh and loud bravado, she would never truly sacrifice the safety of her teammate. Orion, however, was ruthless. If it meant gaining an edge, he would shred his players like Skye did books. It was Orion’s last year, my fifth, and he wanted to go out in glory. We’d entered the friendly with one objective: to wear down Ravenclaw psychologically. And if a visit to the hospital wing was included—for either team—so be it.

We did end up sending an opposing chaser to Madam Pomfrey. While Gryffindors made it off the field on our own two legs, I wasn’t the only one limping sorely. I sported a scratch on my cheek where a leather gauntlet on one of my own beaters had knicked my face. He was protecting me from a bludger, bless him, and afterwards I hobbled to the Prefect bathroom to rid myself of the caked-in dirt and grass before a much-needed supper.

I’d rounded the corner of the fifth-floor hallway and nearly gained on Boris the Bewildered when the bathroom door swung open. A figure in Hufflepuff robes bounded out and I stopped short when I recognized the blonde braids, still dripping from the bath. Penny.

_Why was she in the Prefect bathroom?_

Before I could call to her, the hand that had been holding the door open continued into an arm that was attached to Bill Weasley.

I registered the damp ginger hair at what felt like the same time as I ducked behind the statue. I rested against Boris’ stone plinth for a moment, my mind whirling.

_Hadn’t he just taken that Ravenclaw prefect to Three Broomsticks last night?_

Carefully I peered around the statue. Though sweaty and exhausted, I tried to keep my breathing inaudible. Penny’s signature giggle punctuated the air. It had grown shriller over the years, to the point where it was beginning to wear on the ear. Where once we’d laughed and said, “Party’s started, Penny’s here,” now we grimly muttered, “Take care your ears, Penny’s near.”

Bill’s tension showed only in a twitch of his jaw muscle before the affable smile took over.

“Easy,” he shushed her. “You were supposed to wait for me to check the corridor.”

“Whoops,” she said, not quite lowering her volume. She leaned toward him as if to kiss him, but he parlayed with an embarrassed laugh and turned toward the door at the far end.

“I don’t want you late for supper,” he said gallantly.

They both left the other way to my enormous relief, and I quickly slipped into the bathroom and locked the door. I never mentioned the incident to either of them; I think I simply couldn’t believe it. It was nearing the end of May by then, and with both O.W.L.sand the final Gryffindor-Ravenclaw match fast-approaching, I had enough on my mind to forget what I’d witnessed until the last day of term.

I didn’t see the two of them in one place again until we were boarding the Express. Many of the 7th years were only there to bid us goodbye. Like Bill, some had accumulated too many belongings to take on the train. Mr. Weasley was picking Bill up in his bewitched Muggle car whose trunk could be expanded to fit all his awards and gifts from his going-away party. 

After we’d wrested Bill away from the endless gaggle of 4th year girls who wanted to hug him one last time, the Cursed Vaults Crew gathered in a circle.

“Dance battle, is it?” Tonks said in her Cockney accent.

“I’ll have Penny, then,” I said. “She’s the only white girl here who can dance.”

We looked cheerfully to her, but she was nowhere to be seen. Puzzled, we turned to each other.

“Forgot something, you reckon?” Rowan wondered.

“Possibly,” Andre said.

But I was watching Bill. He’d fallen quite silent, and seemed greatly interested in an invisible thread on his sleeve.

We were soon swept up once again in the banter and misty-eyed hugs with our Head Boy and object of more than one of our affections. Once aboard, Tulip pulled me into a cabin with Tonks for our ongoing Exploding Snap marathon.

“I’d like to see that Penny got on,” I said.

Tulip waved her hand. “She’s sitting with Andre in the next carriage.”

“Is she? Alright then.”

When I sought her out later though, neither she nor Andre were there.

Our lives seemed to turn on that summer. After two rocky years on the Quidditch team, I decided not to return. I had that spectacular Hufflepuff match in my fourth year. Then this year I bungled the final and everyone knew it was my fault. I was a good flyer—hardy, fearless even—but at best a middling athlete. I came on the team to replace a hurt player, but my throwing arm was so weak that Slytherin started shouting that I threw like a Muggle whenever I entered the pitch. Charlie, who could swing every position, played Chaser and I took Seeker.

I had my moments as Seeker—but I was no Charlie. Charlie was stupendous. He had the kind of inborn skill no amount of training could replicate. Little cousin Cho was like that; a natural flyer since the age of three.

Charlie was stepping into captain this year after Orion’s graduation, and he wanted me to stay on. “We could switch back,” he offered. “I could drill you.”

It was kind, but I had other reasons to quit. My parents weren’t thrilled with the amount of time the daily practices took. I’d sported dark circles under my eyes on Easter break from studying for O.W.L.s and training for matches at the same time. With Prefect duties keeping me up later and out of bed earlier, I was hurting for sleep. Now that I was a rising sixth-year with a full roster of N.E.W.T. classes, there was no small pressure in the Chang household for me to focus on my studies in preparation for my future career.

Rowan and I started growing apart. I’d never known this, but she disliked Tonks and Tulip. The Troublemaking Trio, the three of us were called. It wasn’t them as people that bothered her, but the way we were always thick as thieves. I admit we spent too much of our fifth year pulling pranks, and even I was growing tired of Zonko’s.

And Penny? She began her descent.

She had always experimented with potions, hiding in the artefact room with a cauldron of smuggled ingredients. Snape gave near free reign to his select star pupils, and by fifth year she regularly visited his stores.

But we had no idea how far she was going...and how far gone she would get.

Perhaps that should have been my first clue as to the effect Bill Weasley had on his scorned lovers. But I didn’t put it together. I was still so naive in many ways. Even after he and I happened. My eyes didn’t open until the moment he came in two other women’s mouths.


	8. Intervene

April 1991

“Chang.”

It was the last voice I wanted to hear. I gritted my teeth and turned.

Professor Snape stood in the empty corridor with me. “This stops. Now.”

"What does…” I couldn't keep the whine out of my voice, “Sir,” I added when I saw his expression.

"Your teenage moping.”

I wanted to roll my eyes but that would only prove the teenage part. Even in my depressive state, I couldn't give him the satisfaction of being correct.

"Professor," I said instead, "you have no idea–“

“A Weasley is the last thing over which anyone should throw her life away."

I paused. “What did you say?"

“A Weasley," he muttered again, shaking his head with disgust.

I stood stunned.

“What did you use?" he continued. “Let me guess—powdered Feruvium.”

I could only nod.

“The Weasley's idea?"

I nodded again.

“It reeks of it. Inelegant. Lengthy and needless suffering. Feruvium tinctured with the proper spell would have been exceedingly more humane.”

“I figured he knew what he was doing…" especially after Valentine's Day.

His upper lip curled. “The boy barely passed his O.W.L. Needless to say, Potions was not one of his N.E.W.T. classes." The derision dropped from his tone. "It is…finished?"

I sighed. “Yes, Sir. The fetus is deletus.” I must have been far gone to speak to him this way.

“That is not quite the spell.”

I wanted to ask if this longstanding joke amongst students had actual basis in reality, but I felt I’d reached my limit of talking with Professor Snape about my reproductive history.

“Tomorrow. 9 o’clock a.m. Sharp.”

I blinked at him. “You're giving me _class_ —on holiday?"

“Perhaps you will actually attend."

I scoffed. “It's too late. I won't be able to catch up. I’m not sitting the exam."

“Don't be stupid. It doesn't become you." He was the only man I knew who could insult through a compliment.

He moved to step past me and paused, looking down his strong nose.

“I would pay the baths a visit beforehand.”

* * *

Perhaps it was that tiny praise wrapped so heavily within the insult that finally shook me from my walking coma. I still had the password to the Prefect’s bathroom, and that’s where I went first. There were no other Prefects around to cite me in any case. I turned on every single faucet and let the foam pile up. In the steamy, soapy water, I stared in wonder at the bubbles. The iridescent rainbow colors that burst in the wan light filtering through the stained-glass windows seemed foreign and strange. I realized I was the one who had been a stranger in the utter normalcy.

I must have washed off a quintal of dirt that day.

At nine in the morning, on the dot, I stood in front of the Potions classroom. My Gryffindor robes, musty and wrinkled in the back of my closet, were freshly Scourgified. I raised my hand and rapped on the door.

It swung open.

Over the rest of Easter holiday, Snape tutored me. I spent mornings in the Potions classroom relearning everything I’d comatically sat through in the last two months. At lunch I scampered to the Great Hall and ate alone in the corner farthest from the other students who’d stayed over the break. Afterwards I would return to Snape’s classroom to test the morning’s lesson, which he had me repeat with grueling tedium until he was satisfied and dismissed me.

It was a frustration I wasn’t heretofore accustomed. The dark, cave-like classroom was stuffy with our thick concoctions. N.E.W.T.-level potions were not merely the difficult ones, they were the dangerous ones. Every morning Snape had to put up a shielding charm around us, and his walls were heavy with the coating of protection, as well.

One afternoon, after stumbling out of the noxious fumes from a particularly complicated mixture, I ran outside simply to breathe. Before long I found myself on the Quidditch pitch. The field looked so serene without the stands of screaming houses; the grass was freshly regrown in preparation for the next round of matches.

April winds were fearsome still on the Highlands; even so, I unclasped my cloak and dropped it to the dirt by the entrance. I stepped out onto the grass and closed my eyes.

Stilling my breath, I stretched my arm out to my side and opened my hand wide.

“Accio,” I whispered, “Comet.”

Something broke off me that afternoon. As the whine of my broom zipping across the field grew louder, I could feel a cracking off of me. When the wood smacked into my ungloved hand and connected to my stinging skin, it felt like a part of me was restored. My fingers gripped the handle of their own accord, my body following as if it had never left, and I was airborne, the hard pieces of the last year falling away from me like the useless shell of a fire crab who’d outgrown it.

After that day, the other classes followed. I sought out Professor Flitwick first, who I knew would be kindest. The others caught wind of my return and, some grudgingly, others graciously, all agreed to meet me after class once the term began. I approached Professor McGonagall last, embarrassed and contrite. My Head of House regarded me a long while, her stature seeming even taller in that endless moment, before giving me an even, “Very well then.”

Before I scurried out of her classroom she said from behind her imposing desk, “Welcome back, Miss Chang.” She had her signature, tiny, approving smile.

I beamed, and danced back to Gryffindor Tower.

* * *

June 1991

The professors may have accepted me back into the fold, but it was not the same with the other students. 

Though I was bathing again, I’d been estranged so long my housemates didn’t quite know how to behave around me. All was not exactly forgiven. I could only repair my friendships with a few.

I stopped by the Leaving Feast for only a few minutes to swipe a Cornish pasty. Chiara smiled at me from the Hufflepuff table and Tonks, who held no grudges, told me she’d catch me on the Express for the thrilling conclusion to our five-year Exploding Snap tournament.

But the next morning I didn’t get on the train. While the castle emptied out the front entrance, I quietly left through the back.

My rat Amos had died at the beginning of the year, and I’d sent Hamish flying to my parents last night. All I had was his empty cage and my well-worn trunk, which I Epoximised to my Comet. I kicked off from the grounds, planning to zip off before anyone spotted me, but right before I hit the cloud cover I paused, hanging in midair, and looked down at the castle.

Hogwarts had swallowed my brother, then spit him out without ceremony. It was the place where I met my first love, an intoxication so deep I couldn’t see it for what it was.

By outside accounts, I’d achieved all one could at Hogwarts: friendships, an impressive set of O.W.L.s, a run on a Quidditch team with quite possibly Britain’s best player of our generation.

But I hadn’t found Jacob. I was now older than he was when I last saw him. He was barely a ghost in my memory. My parents gave no indication they ever thought of him. Lately I wondered if he had really existed.

With one last look at this castle I called home for seven years, I tightened my grip around my broomstick and disappeared into the clouds.

_Illustration by[Zephyr_Zult](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zephyr_Zult)_


	9. Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thus begins Part II: Adeline

**Part II: Adeline**

March 1996

My white velvet traveling cloak whipped around me with a satisfying heft as I appeared on the gray stone bridge. Ahead of me loomed the heavy, stately doors that had held my life at its most pivotal years. The wind snapped my white silk robes about my legs, curled up my snowy gloves, and whistled its way through the turrets, where it spiraled around Gryffindor Tower that was silhouetted through the haze of the Highlands.

The doors were already rolling open with an ancient groan. The toad-like woman stood primly in pink at the top of the steps, where Dumbledore should have been.

“Ambassador Chang.” Her girly voice filtered thinly to me. Even the air seemed to recoil at the sound. “Hogwarts is ever so pleased to have you. Our upperclassmen will be much eager to hear of the opportunities abroad that are available to them, if they should only excel as you have.”

Behind my fur balaclava I snorted. Clearly she hadn’t explored my records too deeply. I was learning the higher one climbed in rank at the Ministry, the more the exploits of one’s youth fell off each rung. It certainly explained Lucius and his pale boy’s club who’d gotten into dicier situations than I did—and who didn’t stop after Hogwarts.

But that was something we don’t speak of, especially now. Especially not to her.

I pulled the soft hood away from my face and smiled brightly.

“Professor Umbridge. Headmaster.” I tucked the small disc of the embassy portkey into my robes and followed her in. The doors rumbled together again, closing off the light.

* * *

The last of the upperclassmen filtered out of the classroom; the fourth years looking so babyish with their innocent faces, even the Slytherins. Turning back to the chalkboard, I cast Tergeo on my writing and had just slipped my wand back into my robes when a deep voice spoke from the doorway.

“I cannot imagine,” said the voice, “why anyone would robe you entirely in white.”

My breath caught.

I stood unmoving. The words rolled slowly over the back of my neck, lingered lazily on the vowels, before reaching its percussive finale.

Like a hare that sprang a trap, I was caught by that voice. I hadn’t heard it in five years, but instantly I was transported back.

* * *

April 1991

I was the girl over Easter break, the lost girl wandering the halls with just the echo of my footsteps in the empty corridors to keep me company. No one could reach me until that one voice spoke to me, commanded me, woke me.

Every day, the voice had spoken over me in measured tones no matter how long it took me to learn it right—the way he knew it, repeatedly until I could grab the pinch of newt’s eye, feel the weight of the dragon liver in my hand without the scales, the potion coming together without the recipe. I thought he was torturing me. Making me repeat a brew over and over even when I’d done it correctly. I’d hated that voice, even as I clung to it, a guidepost in the dark tunnel that had no end. And as the grueling hours wore on, the voice became a mantra, a metronome conducting my hands to move with muscle memory. I would never forget a single ingredient, so ingrained was the voice, naming each step with a deep assurance.

A voice I’d never admitted that I’d begun to find soothing.

On the day of the N.E.W.T.s, while everyone paced and some even trembled outside the door to the potions classroom, I was still. I made no sound all through the exam.

He observed each examination, all twelve of us, as he did every year. Silently he stood in the corner, his black robes blending into the shadow. The adjudicators, an elderly witch with roughened hands and a middle-aged wizard with a sniffly expression, watched with interest as I pulled ingredients from the jars, some directly with my hands, others with my wand when they were caustic to the skin, with seeming haphazard. The wizard coughed when I hacked a chip off the Erumpent horn and threw it in without placing it on the scale first.

I didn’t look to the corner, although I was never unaware of his presence. I didn’t look much anywhere. There were times when I was stirring that my gaze grew hazy and I almost closed my eyes, but I knew that would call for instant disqualification. When I finished, the witch took the cup with its richly purple contents, and bravely sipped. The wizard stood with wand ready.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then a single gray curl from the witch’s head dropped to the ground. All at once, her hair slipped from her head and fell to the floor, laying on the cold stone and looking like the sad remains of a dead rat. The wizard blanched.

The witch gave a yelp and a jump as if someone had just goosed her. Out of her scalp sprang tumbles of black curls, as shiny as if she’d just doused them with Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion. Her skin smoothed over her face, down her neck and to her hands. She straightened, placing her hands on her trim waist. The wizard held up a mirror. Her plump lips curled.

The wizard pointed his wand at her.

The witch waved him off. “Oh Alphard, no need. We have only four left to examine. They’ll never know.”

“Mother!”

“Alright, alright.” The witch gave one more glance at her twenty-year-old self in the mirror and faced her son’s reversing spell. She gave me a wink before dismissing me, and even her son sniffed in an impressed way.

But it wasn’t their impression I cared about. I lifted my cloak off the chair and slipped it back around my shoulders, fastening the clasp with almost exaggerated care. Finally, I could put off the moment no longer and headed to the door. I opened it. Then, in a rush of courage, I lifted my head to the corner where he’d been standing this whole time.

Across the dim dungeon room I sought his eyes. They were on me. A torch in its sconce stood just in front of him. The light danced in his dark eyes. They were unreadable. But they didn’t look away. I’d let the door swing closed on that image.


	10. Diplomacy

June 1991 - 1992

I hadn’t crossed paths with him again after the examination. The few minutes I’d stopped by the Leaving Feast he was but a small, dark speck at Head Table on the far side of the Great Hall that I hardly noticed in my haste to escape scrutiny.

In July the examination marks were posted. I’d gotten the only Outstanding N.E.W.T. that year in Potions. It was that “O” that got me into the Ministry, for I’d barely squeaked by with Acceptables in the other four requirements. The offer came on the heels of the results. The International Confederation of Wizards had recruited me for an International Task Force stationed in China, which was not a part of the United Chinese Nations.

I was too surprised to be chuffed. I stood in my room holding the letter for many minutes, rereading it as if the words might disappear at any second. For a moment, I let myself think of the year. Everything that had happened came flooding in at once, speeding in terrible images, slowing finally in the dim classroom, humid and warm, a place that had, unwittingly, become a protective cave where I could block out all the memories and see only powder and liquids that came together in a way the pieces of my life didn’t.

When I finally regained myself, I brought the news downstairs. My parents took it with a nonchalant toast of wine. Since I hadn’t been home since Christmas, they hadn’t the foggiest what had happened.

“See here, Adeline,” said my father, “And you whinged about having to learn Chinese all these years. This will open doors indeed.”

The position turned out not quite as cosseted as my father supposed. Our ancestral region had experienced unrest for decades. After Grindelwald’s defeat, his remaining Alliance members who were not killed or captured congregated in China and the Soviet Union, infiltrating the Muggle government of both countries and living as obnoxious expats. These Dark Wizards pulled China out of U.C.N. and took over Kunlun, the ancient magical academy Changs had attended for ten thousand years.

Chinese wizards on Dumbledore’s side fled to Hong Kong, Macau or, like my mother’s family, Taiwan. Some emigrated to America or Britain, like my father’s side.

Our job was twofold: find wizards in China who wanted to leave and ferry them safely out, and monitor Dark Wizard activity for any signs of Voldemort or clues to his whereabouts. While my father imagined a worklife resembling the Tibetan Task Force’s, the reality was leagues from it.

The Tibet team drank cocoa and played Wizard Chess as the Yetis hibernated for weeks at a time.

U.C.N. team slept with our wands under our pillows.

It should have been an indication what I was in for when my official satchel arrived stuffed with fourteen Muggle passports of different identities from various countries. Fourteen rune-coded phials accompanied each. The enclosed letter was charmed to open only when I was alone, at which point it instructed me to assume the first identity and consume the corresponding phial of polyjuice potion before traveling to the Task Force base, which was currently in Shandong Province in the north. The moment my eyes travelled to the last word in the letter it combusted into sparkling ash that disappeared before it hit the carpet.

Now I know why I’d gotten the job. I’d received an Outstanding in my Ancient Runes O.W.L., a class only three of us took that year. It turned out to be the only thing every single one of us on the team had in common: we all read runes. All our equipment and brief messages were coded in these symbols so esoteric even we struggled to decipher them quickly. But we had to, for we learned all too well how little margin there was for mistakes.

There were six of us. My Chinese was by far the worst. Three, including our Handler Wizard, were U.C.N. natives already in the field; one was a Brazilian Chinese wizard who graduated from Castelobruxo last year, and a boy from Mahoutokoro was a new recruit like me.

Kenzo Kitano was fluent in four languages, flew a broom better than Charlie Weasley, and was so heart-stoppingly handsome I hated this job instantly. Our first rule, after obeying and upholding the International Statute of Secrecy, was non-fraternization with each other or local wizards. We couldn’t afford to lose our focus or our priorities.

Of course, a pack of hormonal 18 to 25-year-olds found a way to interpret that rule to the letter. We never so much as looked at each other. Instead, we positively ravaged the Muggle singles scene, especially when we were stationed in the big cities. If you were on the pull in the early nineties, just follow U.C.N. ITF and you would do just fine for yourself.

We established an ethical code amongst ourselves for dalliances: no obliviating the  Má guā, as Muggles were called in Chinese. That was the extent of our ethical discussion.

As long as we boxed clever at our jobs, our Handler stayed out of our extracurriculars. I spent the first couple months of that year in China shagging as effectively as I worked. Whatever ran me as far from my previous life as possible. I was far from home, on my own, a stranger in a dangerous land, and I could do what and whomever I wanted.

For one moment, while braced up against a nightclub lav stall with a Má guā I just met thrusting into me, I suddenly understood Bill. For a moment.

The thought of Bill cooled me. I pushed the red-faced Má guā off me before he came and left the loo. In the dark, noisy hallway I drank the next polyjuice potion and was a burly male security guard before the Má guā reappeared. He stumbled past me, looking for the skinny punk chick he'd just been stuffing.

The doubling days were the most fun. Though rare, there were occasions when one of us needed to be in two places at once. We’d all donated a handful of our own hairs before we left our countries, and there were cases of each other’s polyjuice potions stored in safehouses throughout the nation for emergencies. These vaults were double-hexed, and the potions destroyed once we’d left that city.

In one such instance, Kenzo was secreting a young Má guā-born witch from Guangzhou to Mahoutokoro. He needed to pick her up from her parents, who thought she was attending a prestigious boarding school in Hong Kong, and simultaneously modify the memories at the Má guā border police he’d infiltrated so her lack of exit wouldn’t be remembered.

Everyone else on the team was already on a task, so it came down to me. I was reluctant, but you don’t say no in this line of work. In my tiny bedroom, I gulped down his potion. My arms and chest filled out, feeling powerful and sure. Between my muscular thighs I felt the heaviness of Kenzo’s cock and I had an urge to grasp it and see how large it could go. Would I be breaking non–fraternization?

Before I could explore that idea, Kenzo’s voice cut through the door.

"Ready, Adeline?"

"Yes, Kitano-san,” I said, avoiding looking in the mirror.

The witch’s parents were familiar with Kenzo, who they thought was a classmate riding the train down to school together. Clearly he had charmed the knickers off them by the way begged me to sit for tea just a little longer, glancing between their daughter and me. The girl, all of fifteen, was similarly smitten. I saw the way she looked at me, at Kenzo, and I felt a pang of jealousy overtaken by bitterness as I inadvertently thought of Bill and the way girls had fawned over him. No matter how far I travelled and how hard I worked, I couldn't get away.

* * *

1992 - 1995

The Task Force was dissolved a year later. U.C.N. began negotiations with China to rejoin them and it wouldn’t suit to have clandestine activity on our part during “civil” talks.

Kenzo left government to train with Japan for the Quidditch World Cup and I can’t say I was sad to see the back of him. It had been too torturous watching him pull a bird in every port. I’d slowed my own leg-overs after a few cities, when it became clear you couldn’t screw a person out of your memory. Instead I threw myself into my work, and it became so exemplary, I did receive the plum position my father expected all along.

By 1992 I was the British attache to U.C.N. for the Department of International Magical Co-operation, assisting Ambassador Wong. Three years on, my boss retired to teach at Kunlun in hopes of turning it back from what the Dark Wizards had made of it. She made a surprising recommendation for her replacement.

At twenty-two, I became the Ambassador to U.C.N. Every Chinese kid, wizard or Má guā, hates when their father is right.


	11. Dark

March 1996

I turned at last.

Severus Snape’s eyes were on me. Unwavering. Steady as a glass of poison hovering under his hand. Firm as his knife slicing into armor-thick creature hide as easily as treacle.

In the five years since I’d left, his face had hardened into something jarring. Snape in the late eighties had been a serious man, strict and difficult to please. But he hadn’t been this.

A permanent furrow drew his already strong eyebrows together, giving him a fierce quality. His stare narrowed onto its mark like an eagle’s, a ruthlessness to his hunter’s gaze that had never seemed this bloodthirsty before. Where once he seemed irritated and busy, now he looked to be strung as tight as a bowstring, driven by some fathomless feeling that roiled too close to the surface. It reminded me of something, something the Task Force had run into on rare, terrifying occasion in China. With an involuntary shiver I recognized it: Darkness.

Snape looked like a Death Eater.

The thought passed in a flash before his face recomposed. A patina of impassivity smoothed his features, as if the real him had withdrawn deeper within and left a mask in its place. Now he just looked tired, circles darkening the hollows of his eyes, a droop to his signature frown.

But something had happened in that instant that I saw him, the glimpse of some truth of him.

I should have been scared. And I was. Dark magic is always a breath-stealing thing when you really experience it. The first time the Task Force encountered a set of Inferi, we three younger members nearly got us all killed. So great was our terror that we froze in place, not only useless but in the way of the older three. Our Handler had been a U.C.N. Auror and, once he shoved us out of the way, disposed of the creatures. Kenzo, the Brazilian and I spoke of it forevermore.

“Slept with our eyes open for days!” we’d exclaim to anyone who would listen.

No test boggart in a Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom could prepare a young person for the field. There’s a feeling that comes with real Dark magic that is almost unexplainable. An electric field of fear, of a life on the line, of the end of that line spooling all too quickly towards you. Dark magic leaves a trace in the air and once you breathe it in, you’ll always recognize it. It’s a web at once repulsive and gripping. Seducing. Exciting.

Powerful.

What the three of us never admitted was that we spoke about it so often because we were exhilarated by what we had experienced. The Dark Arts were, we realized the further we went, not altogether dissimilar from our own work. We traded in secrets, sold whatever story we had to, all in the name of what we believed was right.

How were we any different?

So in that moment when I, the brand new emissary between magical titans, should have felt great alarm, instead I was fascinated. The fearsome Professor Snape had revealed something about himself beyond the veneer of intimidation. This wasn’t the cantankerous teacher who handed out detentions like candy. Behind the bat wings of that dark cloak was a man who was haunted by a merciless force that had no outlet and would not let go.

It was rage.

I knew it well.

I’d known it when I walked into Bill’s flat and heard it to the tune of two blonde heads between his legs. Tasted it in the bitter herbs that coursed through my veins to my angry womb squeezing in on itself.

“To you, William,” I’d toasted every day until it was done.

I’d felt it in every embrace of another useless Má guā who talked too loudly and screwed too poorly. Then later, in the empty months after I had given up trying to sleep my way out of my misery. I had sat with this rage alone in whatever safehouse of whatever city or village we were embedded in while the rest of the team caroused with the locals. I’d nursed the rage as if it were my love child, and it became my pet, my shield. It gave me focus.

It made me strong.

What I saw when I looked at Snape the Death Eater, was power.

My fingers twitched towards my wand, an instinct from that year in China. We weren’t Aurors, and it hadn’t been our job to deal directly with Dark Wizards. But our work put us at a constant danger of arousing their attention. That one year in the field changed me in a way the last four in diplomacy couldn’t undo. Where once I was a dreaming girl with Bill Weasley in my eyes, now I was a suspicious lass with one eye on my wand.

Protocol dictated I should report any hint of Darkness for further investigation, and then run the Hades in the other direction.

Instead, my hand lowered. The embassy silks I wore may be white and pristine, but the secrets I harbored in my heart no longer were.

I took a step towards him.


	12. Infamous

Professor Snape had come to fetch me for supper at Umbridge’s behest. At least that was what he had said after I had stopped gawping at him, but not before an odd look fluttered across his eyes, as if he’d read me with one look and was just as surprised by what he saw in me as I had in him.

I felt small next to him as we walked the corridors to the Great Hall. He was not the tallest man comparatively, five foot nine at most. But something about him now made people cower in his presence. You could see it everywhere he walked.

A hush would fall when he passed through, throngs falling away to give him space. Students stared as we crossed the courtyard, silently turning to take in the pink embroidered embassy seal on the back of my cloak, then quickly clustering together once we’d passed to whisper, no doubt, that I was the older, infamous Chang girl. Poor Cho. I’d be gone soon and she could go back to being the unblemished Ravenclaw darling.

So I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the change in him. Even the younger students who hadn’t known him before this Dark enhancement felt it. Their curious glances at me averted nervously when his glower swept over them, and they could only watch the hems of our gowns—heavy black and rippling white—billow past them. It was then I realized how slowly he was walking.

Growing up here I was used to walking at a clip to keep pace with the invariably taller people around me. U.C.N., a cultural shock at first, became a relief. I wasn’t one of the shortest in the room anymore. I was rather average. My rhythms there had fallen into a comforting, natural speed. When I was attaché, I and the other assistants gave deference to Ambassador Wong by falling a step behind her at all times, no matter how slowly she perambulated. Since becoming Ambassador less than a month ago, I was now the one setting the tempo.

I’d carried this measured walk with me on my return to Hogwarts, and Snape, without showing he had noticed at all, had been keeping pace with me. Combined with the reaction around us, we were practically proceeding at a funeral march.

It only underscored his proximity. I had never been this near to any professor before, especially not during Snape’s private tutoring. If anything, he acted as though I had a repelling charm around me. In class he hovered over students regularly, particularly when we had bungled a potion, which we did often, to his grave annoyance. But during our Easter break lessons he taught almost exclusively from across the room as if my cauldron or even I might explode at any moment.

Now we walked nearly shoulder to arm, brushing a few times on the narrower covered path to the courtyard. The wind carried his scent easily to me, an impenetrable smell like the leather of an animal collar. Though it was a chilly evening, Snape emitted some sort of heat, as if his power was too great to contain and he was barely holding it all in one body for propriety’s sake. It extended into a radius around him that encompassed me as I walked alongside, pulsating unavoidably with it. Mixed in were the traces of Dark magic that continuously sent ghostly fingers beckoning.

The whole effect had me drunk and heady. I hardly remembered my feet touching the ground. But now we were in the Great Hall, where the ceiling showed a clear night sky studded with dazzling stars. Somehow I made it to the staff table, and was vaguely aware of Snape pulling my chair for me before taking his seat to my right.

To my left, Professor Sprout smiled amiably at me, but I soon lost track of the conversation. My napkin slipped from my lap to the ground. The arm to my right casually pointed downwards, and the cloth floated back onto my lap, draping so languidly across my thighs it felt like a caress. I took a shuddering breath.

And now Snape was speaking, his low voice cutting through the din of chatter and clanging dishes.

“Perhaps if you spear the roast itself, you will find it more readily arrives at your mouth.”

I blinked down at my plate. My empty fork jabbed uselessly against the golden surface, creating a screech that made Pomona Sprout wince and turn in the other direction where she hastily struck up conversation with Professor Flitwick instead. I scanned the hall, hoping no student had seen, and quickly pierced my fork through the beef. My other hand grappled uselessly on the table, my knife nowhere to be found.

Snape flipped his own knife in one smooth motion and proffered the handle end to me. I grasped it without touching his fingers— _why was he still so warm!_ —and set it to the meat. It sliced through before I could apply any pressure.

He’d enchanted it.

I snorted inwardly. _Was he going to feed me as well?_

His white-sleeve-edged hand appeared in front of me. I placed the knife back into it.

“You’re perfectly capable of completing the task yourself.”

I froze. Had he…I looked at him but he was intently cutting his own roast.

After dinner, Snape pulled my chair out for me, then inclined his head and bid me a curt good evening. Before I could respond, Cho waved from the Ravenclaw table.

We took a walk around the Lake, skirting couples mooning at each other on the dirt path. It took five laps before she stopped crying about that beautiful boyfriend who’d been murdered last year, then another two laps to finish bemoaning the Potter prat she was dating now. I’d felt so sorry for the little boy when I was a child hearing his story, but after all of Cho’s owls about his complete incompetence in their relationship, I found him increasingly annoying.

“Marietta says I should slip him a love potion,” Cho said. “To move things along.”

I shuddered inwardly. I was not a fan of that family. Madame Edgecombe made things quite difficult at the Ministry with her insular, head-in-the-sand ways. Those of us in the rest of the outside world could easily see trouble was fomenting. The horrifying part was, we had no idea where or when.

“ _Aiya_ , _Shiao Cho_.” Now that she was taller than me by three inches, I liked calling her by her childhood nickname, Little Autumn. “In this case, keep your own counsel.”

“Like you,” she said. “You don’t bother with these silly boys.”

“If only,” I laughed. “I bothered so much, I got into quite a spot of trouble. I nearly ruined my entire wizarding career.”

She looked aghast. “No! I can’t even imagine. How did you get here from there?”

“I had help.”

She peered at me curiously. “Who?”

Without thinking I answered, “Someone who cared more than anyone else did.”


	13. See

Against the waxing moon the man’s silhouette made an unmistakable profile. The aquiline nose between the snarling eyebrows, the black hair that framed the tight jaw.

He was upon me in an instant.

Now his hands I longed for were on my body.

I was mounting him, my legs wrapping around him, seeking satisfaction. Right there in the courtyard, needing to feel his hardness against my softest.

With a gasp, I woke. Blinking into the darkness, shocked between wake and sleep.

My body burned as if his hands were still on me.

I shook my head. They were never on me.

Throwing the covers off, I swung my legs over the bed and slipped into my suede boots. I threw on my cloak and left the room, holding my breath past McGonagall’s chambers as if I were still a student.

The moment I stepped onto the cobblestone I felt stupid. The courtyard looked nothing like in my dream. Clouds had gathered overnight and the waning moon was a weak, pale smudge behind them. My teeth already chattered.

U.C.N. headquarters remained in Taipei while we negotiated reunification, and all our official robes were silk, satin, or chiffon. My traveling cloak shielded my gauzy nightgown from the Highland wind, but my bare hands felt icy and my ears stung.

Sighing at myself, I turned back to reenter the castle.

“Be wary, Ambassador,” came the low voice. “Of what may roam…in the night.”

My fingers on the door handle paused. With my back still turned I smiled, almost giddy from the excitement suddenly swirling the air.

“I’m no longer afraid of the Dark,” I said.

He was so quiet. So deathly quiet, that he was behind me in an instant and when next he spoke, it was nearly in my ear.

“You should be.”

I shivered.

But inside, I was burning hot.

I closed my eyes, so heady from his nearness I wanted to steady myself against the door. But the thought of putting my hands up against the weather-beaten wood with him standing behind me only stoked the fire in my chest.

I strained to regain control of my thoughts. “I should thank you. I’m only here because-”

“You earned it yourself.”

The memory swam up yet again, as freshly as if it had been yesterday. After the N.E.W.T. examination. The way I sought his eyes for a sign, some sort of approval in his imperturbable face. An indication that he had noticed what I’d done, that it had mattered.

That I was seen.

And the deep voice spoke. “I did see you, on that day. I saw you display the exact torture of making a potion in its unforgiving science, without losing its ineffable art. Watching you was…almost,” he bit the last word with his teeth, “ _agony_.”

Then it happened. The voice pushed my resolve over the edge and opened the gate to the thoughts I didn’t want surfacing. Images from my dream flashed unbidden, unstoppable, at last: my white nightgown fluttering to the ground, the snowy silk coming to rest on top of his rough black cloak. The stiff row of prim black buttons that formed his armor spraying like scattershot as my small hands tore open his coat. His breath on my neck, his mouth—

“Not here.”

His voice broke through the rush of images, a relief and frustration simultaneously.

“My office.”

With a swish of robes, his heat behind me was gone. I spun around, my heavy breath coming out in white puffs. The courtyard was empty, save for a tiny form at the entrance to the covered walkway. Mrs. Norris’ yellow eyes shone at me. Suppressing the urge to hiss at her, I opened the door and disappeared into the castle.


	14. Legilimens

On the dungeon floor, I slowed as I approached the Potions classroom. The door to Professor Snape’s adjacent office was further down the corridor, but I had to see this room again. Drawing myself up as if a stop to Potions class at four in the morning was entirely unexceptional for the U.C.N. Ambassador, I drew out my wand. Before I could attempt to undo the wards Snape kept around his classroom and quarters, the door clicked open on its own. Hastily I replaced my wand and swept up my robes, which shimmered glaringly out of place in the dungeon gloom.

Two torches flared to life as I entered. I walked along the wall, touring the neatly-lined jars that had kept sentry as I’d hunched over bubbling cauldrons. Seven years I toiled in this classroom, yet the hours from Easter Break onwards stand out clearest. I’d been stubborn and scared in equal measure under his watchful gaze, too nervous to notice until the day of the exam how…

Severus Snape’s dark eyes glittered in his stony face, as he stepped into the room from his office. Both doors clicked closed and sealed.

Wordlessly he countered as I continued circling the room, so that we resembled dancers in a silent, slightly predatory waltz. He had removed his outer robes and now the militaristic buttons of his frock coat caught the torchlight and twinkled as if to mock my dream.

“Such disregard you have for my tailor,” he responded.

“How are you doing this?” I whispered. What I really meant was, _It takes one powerful wizard to get into a mind without a wand. Someone like Voldemort._

He clapped a hand to his left forearm. “He is known to be the most accomplished Legilimens of our time. But not the only one.”

So it was true. I had heard rumor Snape was giving Cho’s little boyfriend Occlumency lessons. It appeared Snape was exceptionally versed in the other direction as well.

“You can’t possibly hear every unspoken thought.”

“That would be exhaustingly dull. The mind of the common man is composed almost entirely of drivel covered over with a false sense of self-importance.”

He was quite right. Four years in diplomacy hadn’t taught me much except just how well people thought of themselves.

“However,” he continued, “it is difficult to ignore something communicated about oneself with such…” He raised an eyebrow. “Vividness.”

I was locked in his gaze like a rabbit to a fox. His stare seemed to enter my body, as if his presence filled me from the inside. All the desires of my unsated life, the coldness of the last four celibate years were laid bare for his mind to see, to touch. To feel. He no longer had on the mask of impassivity anymore. His eyes had taken on the keen, savage look I’d seen for a fleeting moment today. I could feel the tendrils of Darkness creeping towards me again. My nostrils flared with its seduction.

That’s when I realized. This desire, this coldness, felt so strong because they weren’t coming only from me. He had known the desolation of empty days turning into years far longer than I have done. There was so much power coiled in his trim frame. It wasn’t fair. He was in a cage here.

No, not just here. Everywhere.

I wanted to free it. I wanted to _be_ free. I could no longer distinguish between his thoughts and mine. I felt my lines waver and go soft.

“Come here,” he snapped, sudden and stern.

A year smuggling strangers with a straight face and I could hardly walk ten feet to this man without trembling. When I reached him, he gripped my arm and yanked me to him with an unexpectedness that made my breath catch.

“Listen to me,” he hissed. “You cannot allow yourself to remain so clumsy.”

“What?” Confusion wrinkled my brow.

“You are as _undisciplined_ as ever. You have all the stillness of a Snidget. I would have thought adulthood would change that. But you are just as emotional as you were in school.”

His face was so close to mine I could see the stubble shadowing his chin and upper lip. The intimacy of this unshaved Snape thrilled me. His hand on my arm was so unbearably warm I wanted to lean into it until my entire body could feel his heat.

There came a glint into his eyes, smug at my yearning.

I shook free of his grasp.

“This is unfair,” I retorted. “Just because you have the ability to eavesdrop on whomever you—”

“ _I_ am not the one doing this,” he said scornfully. “You are an embarrassingly loud projector. Even someone with a rudimentary trace of Legilimency would be able to pick up on your thoughts.”

I remembered the way Bill had seemed to know me so well.

“Yes,” he sneered. “Even the eldest Weasley, though too witless to be aware of what he was doing.”

 _To his great advantage_ , I was sure he was refraining from saying.

“To your great detriment,” he said instead, sounding almost…gentle.

Almost.

His following words were brusque again. “It is for this reason you must learn to control your mind. When next a wizard attempts to breach your defenses, it will not be for the sake of indulging a schoolgirl crush.”

I looked away. His derision stung. Five years had not dulled the ache in the least. If anything, it had only sharpened the memory’s edges. Bill had not been a crush. But Snape would know nothing about a hopeless first love.

A sound made me look at him again. He was sneering. “Wouldn’t I? I have memories that would cut a young heart open should you so glance at them. Because of _them_ I have become this way.”

_This accomplished an Occlumens? Or…_

“You are no longer in a position where you can be so incautious,” he said briskly, as if changing the course of conversation. “You post in U.C.N. at what length?”

“Eleven months the twelve. I return mere days at a time.”

He weighed the option for only a second. “Your mother’s school. My counterpart there. She will provide you with what you need.”

“Saito-sensei?” Strange he wouldn’t suggest the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

“Do you believe that man would teach you without question?”

I smiled ruefully. Tokohama-sensei was DADA professor for a reason. He was as suspicious as he was strict. “No, I suppose not. With him, I’d be in danger of the embassy branding me a security leak via an anonymous source.”

A scurrying sounded outside the classroom and Snape straightened, implacable again. The house elves were running a cleaning charm over the corridors. Dawn was nearly here.

“My fireplace—” he began, offering the Floo network in his office. But I made excuse of my white robes and bid a hasty retreat. I couldn’t get out of the dungeons fast enough.

It felt cold again without his mind inside mine. I hated myself for the empty feeling it left. I hated him with the same desperation I’d felt in my dream.

In my room, I crawled into the bed, cloak and all, where I shut my eyes and tried not to feel the searing imprint of his hand on my arm.


	15. Segotias

Summer 1996

Mahoutokoro was exactly the place to study Occlumency. The school, and the Japanese wizarding culture at large, were famous for their ability to tame the emotions. It made for a society of deep feelings underneath a quiet surface. Not unlike someone I knew…

That Snape knew my mother had schooled at Mahoutokoro as well as each professor’s personality was no longer a surprise to me. Whether through Legilimency or just plain cleverness, Severus Snape seemed to know bit too much of everything.

Saito-sensei had taught my mother and received me with all the discretion Snape had known she would. She was his counterpart in many ways: exacting in her standards and expecting a work ethic to rival her own. Just as I had done for him, I delivered similarly for her. By the time I was due to London at summer’s end, Snape would be proud.

But I could—and would—hide that wish with my other secrets now.

It was increasingly strange to think of Britain as home. I’d spent more of my adult life in U.C.N. and, while its summer cyclones and mild winters were still foreign and lush, being around people who looked like me and sounded like my mother was growing familiar in a tender, long-lost way. It had even begun to fill the chasm that I never thought would heal. At Hogwarts, not a day went by that I didn’t think of Jacob. It was my singular focus.

Now weeks could go by when the busyness of meetings and travel kept me on a whirlwind of work, Occlumency practice, and the rare social outing. As a cover for visiting Mahoutokoro so often, I regularly brought along my attachés to Kenzo’s Quidditch games. The attaché from France nearly fell out of our box when my handsome chaser friend flew over to greet us. I firmly steered my starry-eyed assistant back to her seat and asked Kitano-san to send my regards to his new girlfriend. There would be no Beauxbatons exchange program on my watch.

I’d found out about Bill’s engagement to what I called the Vizsla this summer.

“Don’t insult ‘em,” Tonks had said, “They’re beautiful dogs!”

No one who really knew him was surprised—she loved money, he loved blondes.

Still, I was disappointed. Even after the two girls. I suppose I’d hoped that was lads being lads. Muggles had a reputation for wantonness; they even had diseases that were spread specifically through fornication. That had long been one of the biggest arguments the pure-blood elite made against intermarriage and the dirtiness of Muggle blood. They worried we wouldn’t be able to cure these ‘whore’s diseases’ with magic. The Task Force had used all manner of protective measures during our Year of Infamy and, so far, made out unscathed.

Even after I’d realized what happened to Penny, what happened to me, I still held out hope. It was astonishing how trenchantly my naiveté persisted.

Chiara was the only one who knew how deeply the news bothered me.

“Did you not think it’s just desserts for the both of them?” she asked when she’d popped her head into my fireplace. “It’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?”

I sighed and shook my head. “I just thought he cared for more than that. Kindness…humility… _something_!” I could hear how dopey I sounded.

“Penny was kind and look where it got her,” Chiara said. “I’m sure those two Muggle lasses were kind indeed.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Pain makes you do that.

“It doesn’t get much kinder than what they’d done for auld Bill.”

A tear came out of my eye, but that could have been from something underneath the laughter.

“Perhaps it’s time you leave it there,” she said in a more serious tone. “People do change. Ya’s can’t take it so personal.”

Somehow Chiara’s Dublin accent softened truth’s blow. She was bang on: they were perfect for each other. Roger Davies hadn’t been the only chap Fleur foreign exchanged with, he was just the only one she was caught with by a professor. The other boys were mostly Slytherins: the money house, of course.

Fleur had wanted Bill from the moment his name made the papers for bringing back the largest trove in Gringotts history. Our old friend had singlehandedly added a wing to the bank with one expedition. I can only imagine his celebrations that night he returned.

It was quite brilliant, really: procuring a job at his workplace. I entered a career to please my parents; Fleur did it so she wouldn’t have to have a career ever again. That was better foresight than I ever had.

“Can he really not see?”

"No man can,” Chiara reminded me. “Not if they don't want him to."

"I figured with his level of curse-breaking, he'd see through any illusion…"

It was baffling, after you've seen a Veela’s true form, that anyone could still be glamoured. But the things that turned a man's head always did baffle me. The contrast was less severe the more human blood a Veela had, but Fleur still looked, shall we say, rather different without her glamour.

Chiara was right. It was time to put Bill to rest.

Before she left my fireplace Chiara winked and said, “Surely enough years have passed. Why not give a thought to auld segotias?”

I smiled, knowing which old friend she meant. She had heard all about my love-hate of Kenzo and when she finally saw his photo in the Daily Prophet before the Quidditch World Cup, she’d agreed he was too dishy not to revisit.

But here, seeing him on his broom where he belonged, I felt only a fond nostalgia for the handsome bloke. He had been part of a delirious, madcap period of my life, one that hadn’t been altogether happy. I realized I didn’t wish to revisit after all.

Now, when I considered her suggestion, it wasn't Kitano-san’s swoony smile that pricked at my subconscious.

It wasn't a smile at all.


	16. Safe

August 1996

Since the attack at the Ministry convinced the world at last of Voldemort’s return, I was given a security detail upon reentry to London on a late August evening. The Auror was waiting by the lifts after I arrived through the International Portkey Gateway on Level Five.

Tonks was unrecognizable without her pink hair and bravado.

“Wotcher, Ambassador,” she said glumly.

“You all right.” I kept my tone light while we were still inside the Ministry.

“Never better!” she said with such brightness I feared she would strain something.

I hated that they’d assigned her to me. I was surprised she had gone back to work so soon after losing her cousin, but then again, it’s what I would do in the face of grief.

It is what I did.

All the same, I should like to have been able to weep with her and now I couldn’t even hold her hand. She kept such a stiff upper lip, so unlike my outspoken mate who was as typically expressive as I was typically emotional.

This Second War was changing all of us.

We never got our chance to speak about Sirius en route to my Belgravia flat. They came upon us right out on the street.

Steps from my building, the bustle of Muggle vehicles and pedestrians mysteriously quelled, giving us a few seconds of warning. Tonks already had her wand drawn when the two dark hooded figures stepped out from each side of the road, carrying with them the sickly familiar stench of Darkness that Snape had an inkling of, but without any of the attraction or finesse. We were evenly matched in number and I reached for my wand, but Tonks pushed me behind her.

"Get out of here, Adeline.”

“We can take them—“

A bolt of green light missed us by inches as she jerked me to the side.

“You’ll get me sacked,” she warned.

“But alive!”

A lamppost exploded to our left.

“Go!” she yelled.

I turned in my spot and Disapparated.

It felt like taking Feruvium for Bill Weasley all over again. My head and body wrenched so hard in different directions I wanted to cry out, but had barely the breath to gasp. I hadn't thought; I didn't even have the time to be nervous. And now I just wanted this experience to end. In desperation, I grasped for the one place I could think of that felt safe and wished to be there with all my might.

"No!" screamed my mind, “You cannot Apparate into Hogwarts!”

But it was too late. My limbs were already whipping together as my body twisted in a new direction. In the next instant, I fell out of the air back-first against a wooden door with a teeth-jarring thud and landed roughly on the pavement where I lay, stunned.

It was eerily silent after the roar of wind in my ears.

Then the door flew open and a shadow descended over me. Calloused fingers touched my neck, expertly feeling for my bones. A wand appeared over me and I felt a cursory pressure run over me as if being scanned by something invisible.

"Death Ea…" I tried to say.

 _Shut up_ , said a voice into my mind.

Arms slid under me and lifted my bruised body. Through half-open eyes I caught the hard line of a man's jaw before my face pressed against the stiff fabric of a dark coat.

I but blinked and was on a leather settee. My stomach lurched to meet my pounding head and I rolled quickly to my side. Out of the corner of my eye a wand flicked and a pail flew under face. I retched obligingly. Nobody moved as I panted for a few moments but that seemed to be all. The wand moved again and the mess disappeared.

I stayed curled on my side, babying my pounding head and the throbbing shoulder where I'd hit the door. From here I could see the opposite wall covered entirely in shelves that were stacked with leather-bound books, some crammed flat into whatever room could be made.

A library?

"You can't Apparate into Hogwarts," I croaked.

"Correct,” said the voice quietly.

I frowned in confusion and tried to remember. I hadn’t thought of a place before Apparating and in that terrifying moment when I felt myself splinching, all I’d wanted most in the world was a place of safety. It hadn’t been the Ministry, nor my offices in U.C.N. It wasn't my old bedroom in my parents’ house, or even the Quidditch pitch at school. What popped into my mind of its own accord was the Potions classroom.

No.

It wasn't the room.

What entered my mind was the feeling of complete focus as a hypnotic voice steadied my rumination and brought my racing thoughts under control. Like a homing beacon imprinted into the pattern of my brain, the voice had spoken to me through the chaos and I’d reached for it, and it had brought me…

I searched across the books to the corner of the room where, in a high-backed armchair, sat Severus Snape.

Safety. I let it cover me at last as my eyelids closed.

* * *

Opening my eyes felt like lifting 10-pound weights with my lids. My vision coalesced onto a sherry glass of pear-colored liquid sitting on a rickety table next to me.

“Drink it.”

“What—” I began, and didn’t bother. I tipped the solution back. Within moments I felt much improved.

“I see you have been taking lessons."

I nodded. “Saito-sensei.”

“Substantially better.”

My hope lifted.

“But far from enough.”

There it was.

I pushed myself to sitting. “I’ll continue them.” I turned to face him and caught a look of cool amusement.

“How docile we now are, Ambassador.” He had a way of saying my title that made me feel like a little girl…and not entirely in a diminutive way.

“Just more practical.”

“As befitting these…precarious times,” he said pointedly.

“We were ambushed outside my flat. Two of them.” I grimaced. “I left Tonks.”

“She understood her employment duties.”

“I need to know she’s alright.” I looked around for my traveling cloak. “I should go back to the Ministry. Akingbade’s probably worried and Scrimgeour’ll want a statement.”

“That is inadvisable at the moment.”

“You think the Death Eaters might still be there?”

“I think the Mugwump and Minister will not be at their offices at one o’clock in the morning.”

I ogled the mantel clock. “Merlin. I have to get a message to Tonks, then.”

“They will be watching for precisely a message from you. Wait until morning. If your Auror is dead, there is nothing you can do in any case.”

I wanted to hit him for saying that, but he was right.

He shifted in his armchair. “Your residence is compromised. It is safe to stay here. Fortunately for everyone, a room has become available only yesterday.”

I peered curiously at him but he offered no further information. Did he have family? Housemates? My mind stopped in horror. _A lady friend?_

“Your encouragement is bracing,” he said drily.

But it wasn’t disbelief. It was mortification that the last time we met I’d thought all type of indecencies about him, and he had seen every single one of them. That I never admitted I had felt this way for years, while he may well have been happily playing house with another. Or others. Had I learned nothing from Bill?

“Stop it!” I said to cover my shame. “Stop poking about my mind; it’s rude!”

He scowled. “You are projecting at high volume again. Thus the need for continued practice.”

“I Occlude just fine. It’s you. You’re just—I can’t seem to…” I clamped my mouth shut before my embarrassment showed further.

He said nothing, but the hard line of his jaw seemed to grow harsher. I finally spotted my cloak neatly folded by the door and stood abruptly.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said.

“Don’t command me; you’re not my professor anymore,” I snapped, sounding like a child.

“No,” he said. “I am not.”

The mocking edge in his voice stopped me.

“So why,” he continued, slowing to a silky, dangerous tone, “Do you wish I still do?”

Oh this rat, this utter berk—

I wheeled around. “Then why don’t you?”

He was silent.

“Why didn’t you do anything that night I came back to Hogwarts? You saw everything in my mind. There wasn’t anyone around.” I took a step closer. “Or are you afraid to?”

A glower came into his eyes: the keen, unpredictable savagery I had seen in the spring. The roil of Darkness began curling off him again. It reached me like a lover’s tease.

I took a breath. “Severus.”

It struck the air like a match hissing to life. The first taste of his name on my tongue sounded more intimate than I had imagined.

His gaze flickered.

“Why?” I asked again.

He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then:

“Because. You are too young. And you do not know what you have asked for.”

My chin lifted. “What have I asked for?”

When next he spoke, I felt young indeed.

“The things I do…what I am…is not kind. And once we begin, I will not be able to leave you the same.”

With that, he rose from his chair and at last vacated his throne.


	17. Danger

Severus Snape bedded a woman like he did everything: with simultaneous focus and casualness. It had taken so long to crack him, but once he’d made the decision, he took the situation into his deft, practiced hand. It was shocking, head-spinning, a dance. Just like his teaching.

I thought he would prowl over slowly in his measured way but as with his work, he moved with swiftness and efficiency, crossing to me in two long strides to grip the muscles at the top of my neck so they relaxed and he could tilt my head back. He rotated my head imperceptibly, left, right, his fingers pressing firmly into the ropey tension in my jaw until it softened and I was pliable as putty. His other hand pressed between my shoulder blades and, in my downy state, my chest rose, leaving my neck exposed to him like a sacrifice.

I was now looking up into his face, not daring to breathe while I waited. His gaze swept over my face, from my eyes down to my lips, over my throat, to my eyes again. A calculating, assessing scrutiny that made me feel like an expensive rose he could caress or destroy. The uncertainty of which one he would choose ratcheted up my heart rate.

Carefully he brought my head upright and stepped away.

Raising a hand sharply into the air, he paused. Then with a careless flick of his thumb and third finger as one would an invisible gnat, my white gown melted off my shoulders. I watched it flutter to the ground like a hurt dove. My dream from months ago. He’d remembered.

With an avian tilt of his head, he assessed again. My chest rose and fell under my silk slip as I stood before this man whose patience I had never fully appreciated until our encounter at Hogwarts, when he plumbed the depths of my unruly mind, considered the depraved things I wanted him to do and walked away, leaving me frustrated near to tears.

Goosepimples rose on my bare arms and legs.

“ _Incendio_ ,” he murmured.

A fire sprang to life in the fireplace behind him. The flames silhouetted the neat lines of his coat as his hands went to the top button and, with agonizing precision, undid each one.

By the time the stiff coat finally dropped, the fire had warmed the room.

“Sit,” he instructed.

I stepped backwards until my thighs touched leather and lowered myself to the settee.

“Remove your slip.”

I pulled the filmy fabric over my head and dropped it to the floor.

“Hm.”

It was the only indication he admired what he saw. I loved U.C.N. undergarments, which were sweet and anachronistically innocent. My lace and cotton brassiere fastened up the front and was comfortable and unstructured. The knickers in a mismatched pink came chastely to my navel and completely ensconced my rear for a clean, modest line. It was not uncommon for grown witches in U.C.N. to sport embroideries of their favorite magical creatures upon their underpants.

Mine were, fortunately, plain at the moment.

He steepled four fingers together and swept them apart is if smoothing a tablecloth, and my knees parted. Then he left me like that, feeling more on display than if I were naked.

Sitting himself nonchalantly back in the armchair, he said, “Show me where you touch when you think of me.”

“Are you joking?”

“I did not ask for you to speak.”

Even as my cheeks burned, my hand already crept its way down, sliding between my splayed legs. He kept his eyes on mine the whole time, not even bothering to watch, which raised the intensity all the more.

“On the floor.”

I didn’t bother protesting this time and lowered myself to the patterned rug.

“To me.”

The crawl, with our eyes still locked, may have been the most emotional act I’ve performed in years.

When I reached him, I sat back on my heels. He’d looked down his nose at me countless times in the classroom, an imposing sight in his black robes. Here in shirtsleeves, unshaven again, there was a slightly different effect. On my knees in front of him I felt my Occlumency training ebb all too quickly.

Keeping a dispassionate eye on me, he reached for his cuff. Leisurely, he rolled his right sleeve neatly up his pale forearm. Then the left one began its journey. As it peeled slowly back, the black lines appeared. First the head of the snake, mouth gaping, incisors poised to strike. Then the coil of the serpentine mass, drawing the eye in with its intricate asymmetry. It was almost scarier this way, this steady reveal of the murderer’s sign etched permanently onto his body. When the skull with its empty eyes was uncovered at last, he rested his arms upon the chair and let me regard him from my spot by his feet.

I followed his narrow chest up to his throat. He had looped his black cravat around the up-turned collar of his white shirt, rather than tucking it into an open neck like Lockhart or his other contemporaries. I stared at it and he raised an eyebrow as if daring me. I needed no further invitation.

My hand darted up and snatched the black cloth, pulling hard. He was prepared and clamped a much larger hand over mine, the other taking hold of my wrist to lift my entire body and drape me over his knee.

With one swift motion he yanked my knickers down and smacked the fleshy lowest part of my bottom three expert times, the ripple from each hit spreading across the entire buttock.

Gripping me in the same low place, thumbs so close to my center but not touching it, he spread me open. The rush of air that met me underscored how revealed I was to him. Across the hard heat of his lap, I writhed.

“Aren’t you pink.”

I wanted to lose myself in his voice.

“Ready for me, are you?” He ran a finger down the middle and confirmed. Without ceremony he plunged the finger inside, where I instantly gripped it as if starved.

I was.

He immediately hooked his finger down towards the front of my body, between the cervix and the front wall. His finger was long enough to reach where I couldn’t, to the spot higher than the one most think is the only. I let out a deep animal sound.

“So needy.”

Where I should have been humiliated, instead I felt taken care of. It was delicious.

He worked me there, on his legs, until I was covering his hand in fluid. It had been so long since a man had laid hands on me, I felt delirious with need. His left arm underneath me rose to support my head, cradling my face against his Dark Mark. Where the mouth of the skull should have been, the serpent’s engorged body erupted like a lewd gesture. It flexed with the sinew of Severus’ arm, driving me forward with its aggression until it forced a desperate noise out of me.

When he saw I could take no more, he took my hand and placed it where I had shown him earlier. In tandem we manipulated me until I convulsed against his warm body, euphorically staining his trousers.

He pulled my knickers off entirely. I had not yet come down when he turned me upright to face him, undoing his trouser buttons. I barely had time to see what he looked like before he was positioning himself, taking full advantage of my freshly sluiced state to slide exquisitely into me. I drew a breath through my teeth from the slight sting, feeling almost virginal after so many closed years. He sat unmoving until I’d adjusted around him, then began a subtle, rocking tilt.

With one hand on the back of my neck he held me face to face, where I struggled not to close my eyes to the pleasure.

“Now you may.”

The image he plucked from my mind told me what he referred to and I pulled the necktie off him at last. My fingers grappled at his collar, but I was too lost in the sensation of sitting impaled upon Severus Snape to focus my vision.

He undid the top button for me and said, “Do what you wanted.”

The way he could insert his command into my own fantasy inflamed a wildness in me. I put my hands on either side of his shirt placket and tore as forcefully as I could. Gratifyingly, three buttons flew off. He took his hand from my neck and brought it flat against my sacrum, pressing me unyieldingly to him while he worked me more quickly now, moving for his pleasure. In this angle he hit the A-spot again, bringing forth more of my wetness to cover the ache of new activity.

“This tightness,” he breathed. “When was your last…”

From my laid-open mind he pulled the image of the nightclub in Shenzhen.

“Muggles,” he spat, pushing into me hard. “You’re too good for that.” He lifted me off him and stood, making me gasp from the sudden emptiness, and threw me over his shoulder. In seconds he reached his bedroom, where he deposited me onto his bed. Flipping me onto my stomach, he grabbed my legs and dragged me to the edge of the bed, where he re-entered me at once.

“You’re even dirtying yourself with me,” he continued as if we’d never paused. “You pure-blood little slut.”

It was a terrible, delectable thing to say and it made me push back against him. He stayed standing, our only contact his hands on my hips and his length rutting in and out. I could feel the fabric of his trousers against my thighs as he thrust, and knowing he was still dressed while he took his pleasure of me enhanced my own. He left the room dark and cold so that I became nothing but a body meant to please Severus Snape.

It was freeing.

All the trammels that came with the embassy, with the school, with our rules and statutes fell away. Nothing was required of me but to lay there.

It was calming.

And soon enough, the familiar pressure built again. I brought my hand back down to get there, and a second later was spasming once more, screaming this time from the excruciating pleasure of climaxing with him inside. He held steady through the storm until I subsided. Then, gripping my hips with renewed force, he slid me onto him over and over, fast and unrelenting, making me cry out until he rewarded me with a groan as he jerked and spilled into me with an intensity that belied the depth of his need too.

Perhaps he had been just as lonely as I have been.

I lay shaking with aftershocks around his still hardness.

His searing heat neared as he leaned over me and, with a delicate finger, brushed aside the hair sticking to my face and said into my ear,

“Well done.”


	18. Spy

If anyone ever hoped to catch Snape sleeping, not even coupling with him half the night will achieve this. The last I remember was creeping exhaustedly towards a pillow, Severus throwing a blanket over me and charming it to stay warm. I woke without any indication of whether he’d spent the night next to me or asleep at all. An image of him hanging upside down in a cave flitted into my mind, cut short by the pointed clang of a pan against a stovetop.

My underclothes and slip were folded neatly on a chair and after dressing, I exited his bedroom through a hidden door in his bookcase back into the drawing room. My gown was draped innocently over the settee, gleaming as if freshly pressed.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I told it.

I followed my nose through another hidden door into the kitchen, where Severus sat with the Daily Prophet, his wand dangling by itself over the stove and conducting the cookware.

Severus held out his hand when I entered and the wand flew back into it, the pans following to the table where they slid the food onto waiting plates. I sat instantly, glad for something to do. We’d avoided post-coital awkwardness, but what one says to a former professor after he’s bent you over his bed I had not studied up on.

On my plate was almost a fry-up, minus back bacon. U.C.N. cuisine was superior to British in every way save for one: breakfast. I’d missed the Full English.

“I apologize for the lack of bacon,” he said, placing his paper on the table. He picked up the pot and poured me tea by hand. “Sleep well, I hope?” he asked offhandedly, as if this had been our routine for years.

“ _Quite_ ,” I said emphatically, then bit back a smile.

“Hm.” There it was again; I was starting to recognize this subtle indicator of satisfaction.

In what was too strange for me to comment on for once, Severus Snape’s undergarments was a vested short union suit in a practical cotton that oddly matched my brassiere almost perfectly in its faded shell colour and was even more wash-worn. Apparently each of us had both little time to shop and a high priority towards comfort. As a result, we now lounged in his stark, gloomy kitchen in our respective functional underclothes, looking like a bizarre boudoir photograph from our grandparents’ era.

“You seem to be commenting just fine on the status of our smallclothes.”

I huffed indignantly. Severus only reached for my shoulder, running the knuckles of his warm hand lightly down my skin. I watched the Dark Mark on his forearm, the menace of its imagery made sharper by the softness of his touch, and remembered the night before. When I looked up, his gaze had a flame in them that brought the color high in my cheeks. My body responded, but the light of day beget a concern.

No seed had touched my womb since Bill. I turned a worried eye to him but he preempted me.

“I took precautions.”

“When did you put an enchantment on me?”

“On myself. It is less of a burden on the witch.”

I was astonished. “There’s something for wizards?”

“I’ve discovered.”

I bit my lip. I didn’t quite want to know how many tries it took for him to make such a discovery.

“The Death Eaters use it,” he explained. “Of the myriad activities the Dark Lord approved for them—for us, many were the consequences with which he did not wish to treat. Particularly where Muggles may be concerned.” _Blood dilution_ was what he meant.

“Huh.”

“Yes?”

“Seems odd for the Dark Lord to care for a witch’s burden.” I’d learned not to say his name in front of Severus lest his Mark burn.

“That,” he admitted, “is why _I_ used it last night. As for the Death Eaters, the concern may have lain more with the breadth of activity. It is a far easier method when a great number is involved.”

Whether he meant per capita, or several at once, I didn’t care to clarify. I couldn’t exactly fault him. His time with the Death Eaters sounded like my first few months with the Task Force…possibly worse. I suppose I should just be glad there wasn’t an army of wee Snapes running about.

He had an uncomfortable expression on his face. I realized he’d heard me.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t spy,” I said.

He froze for the briefest of moments.

“I _will_ keep practicing Occlumency,” I pressed on. “But until then, maybe you should stop listening.”

“Oh what novelty. ‘Stop listening.’ I shall have to try that.”

I gave him a sour look.

Impatiently he retorted, “You are the only other person in this elsewise silent house. You prattle on with your endless, outrageous commentary and you expect I should tune you out like a wireless.”

My mouth dropped open. “You’re a right insufferable git.”

He leaned across the table with the intimidating speed I’d seen so many times in my youth, braced his hands on either side of me and said, “Yes I am.”

We held our stare. And, at last, Severus Snape kissed me for the first time.

_Illustrated by[Zephyr_Zult](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zephyr_Zult)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The union suit is dedicated to maybeshesnaped, without whom we would never know what lay under that frock coat.


	19. Chained

31 August 1996 - 30 June 1997

The next time I showed up at his door, I was standing. He opened it before I could knock and let me in without greeting. Wordlessly, he shut the door and put me up against it. His mouth was on mine, hot and gratifying, the warm press of his body following. My hands found his shoulders, capable and hard under the coat he wore even at home, then up into his hair, silkier than mine when he wasn't working.

We didn't make it to his bed this time. His body felt familiar now as I drew it into mine.

We didn't say a single word that entire night, not even in our minds.

The following morning, I returned to U.C.N.; he to Hogwarts. In the ensuing year I visited him several more times. With my continued Occlumency practice, I was able to plod forward like a workhorse, attentive at meetings and never shirking my duties. All the while, I counted the days until the next time I could see him. It was an addiction as bad as searching futilely for Jacob, with risks so dire that I could only behave as if I had nothing to lose.

After the assassination attempt, the ministry quartered me at the office. Aurors accompanied me everywhere, but since they were kept so busy, there wasn't always one to spare. So for my protection, they restricted my portkey—I couldn't even visit my parents in case Death Eaters attempted to follow me there. Only one destination was still open to travel freely between.

So I found him at Hogwarts.

He was on edge there, with a tense, suspicious energy that he brought to our interludes. He was finally teaching the subject he had always wanted, and the dominant, masculine force he’d kept at bay was unleashed at last. He would command me to my knees with a single word, "Down,” pull himself out of his trousers and twist a hand in my hair until he spent in my mouth. He no longer cared for my satisfaction, driving my head repeatedly up and all the way down to the base to release in my throat, then dismissing me after tucking himself back together.

When he did pay my body attention, he wrenched orgasm from me like it was torture, standing fully clothed over my naked body and pointing his wand between my legs until my core felt like it was on fire. I screamed and spasmed with such relieving intensity I thought I would pass out.

It only made my need worse. Whether he burned hot enough to engulf me or was so cold it was drowning, I never had enough time with him. He wasn’t a man of soft words, but not a single one, cruel or sharp, was a lie. It may seem a strange thing to say, given all he didn’t tell me. But I was in the same position, caught between a kingdom at arms and a republic too embroiled in its own struggles to be dragged into another’s ruin.

In this time of whispers and war, where those of us in any official capacity slept with one eye open, being with him was the most truthful thing I had in my breathless, anxious life.

When we got to that fateful day at the last of June, which I wouldn't fully understand until after, he was oddly, unbearably tender.

He clutched my body against his as he slowly moved me with him. One hand curled around my throat and neck with a grip so skillful I felt even safer than I did the day I Apparated to his door. He stared so mournfully that tears sprang into my eyes, spilling onto my cheeks as he watched, his face falling with anguish in a way I had never seen.

 _What is it?_ I cried out in my mind. _What are you going to do?_

His mouth opened, on the brink of spilling forth what he couldn't say. But he only shook his head, gasping as he came, straining to keep his eyes on mine so that, for an instant, I felt the edges of a thought—more of a feeling, an all-encompassing agony protecting deep within it something very, very soft that reached out and touched me.

My heart broke.

The dispatch came that very night to officials across the globe.

My British attaché met me at the Portkey Gateway in U.C.N., pulling at me before my feet steadied on Taiwanese soil. Morwenna’s face was so pale I already knew.

"Dumbledore's dead," she said woodenly. I didn't want or need to hear the next words but they came anyway. "Severus Snape did it."

I didn't react as anyone—especially I—expected. Where there was panic and a sort of end-times desperation, I became focused and quiet.

For the first time, I was still.

He would have been at last proud.

There was something hidden in all this, a red string tying all others together and revealing the true tale. If I could only follow it.

I started the slow work of piecing together all the half glimpses he gave me that I brushed aside as accidents. I should have known better. Snape, at thirty-seven, didn't make mistakes. I labored for him, for me. The us that never was and never could be.

Behind my Occlumency shield, I turned over his hints and followed his trail, starting with that final moment together. In that unexpected soft touch he had sent a message, one so uncharacteristic I thought I’d heard incorrectly:

_I don't want to go._

Simple as a child's cry.

I didn't know the details. Why Dumbledore asked of him this, what the final plan was. But I understood without a doubt that Snape had not wanted to kill Albus, but did so anyway.

He was, just as I gleaned two years ago, caged and unfree, even at Hogwarts.

Especially at Hogwarts.

_Illustration by[Zephyr_Zult](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zephyr_Zult)_


	20. Fall

July 1997

To understand, I needed more; I needed to see him again. But the climate was so tense, Akingbade didn’t want a single one of us reentering Britain at the moment.

Not attending Tonks’ wedding was a great sadness. When she announced it, I set about obtaining Polyjuice potion, but she naysayed the idea.

"I can't in good conscience let you defy your own safety protocols, Adi—this is a werewolf wedding to an Auror for chrissakes. Ministry’s going to be all over it.“

“I’d be in good hands, though."

But she had grown, taking her job with a gravitas I had lately come to doubt in myself. Not too grown, however, for the howler I sent to arrive the night of her wedding, promptly at bedtime.

“REMUS DON’T FORGET TO TRIM YOUR NAILS.”

I received one back the following Monday—to my office at the Ministry—first laughing uproariously, then loudly proclaiming their gratitude to

“Ambassador Chang

Miss Hogwarts-no-pants

Who likes to eat her toenails.”

The ambassador from Brazil, whose office was next to mine, avoided me for a week afterwards.

* * *

31 July 1997

A few weeks later, I got my chance to go back.

As a last ditch effort to rally international support since he had all but lost it domestically, Scrimgeour called a home meeting of all ambassadors. Against Akingbade’s urging, I told my British attaché to respond.

She looked stricken

"Not you, Morwenna,” I quickly said to the frightened girl. “I alone.”

“Ma'am,” she said tremulously, “once you walk into that building, you may never walk out again."

Given the alternative, I could accept that.

"Send the reply."

Seating herself at my telegraph station, Morwenna gave the password and input the message:

U.C.N. will attend.

* * *

1 August 1997

The first thing I like to do when I’ve completed transcontinental portkey travel is definitively _not_ Disapparating.

Yet the moment I passed through the gates, arms enveloped me and I felt the familiar squeezing on my ribs. This one was brief; half a second later the blackness lifted and air flooded my lungs again. Even though I’d landed, it was still dark.

My head was cradled against something sweetly warm. I moved and my cheek brushed against buttons. The steely arms caging me stayed like oak sentries, swaddling me within a dark, protective tent. A man’s cloak.

The smell of well-honed leather engulfed me; the feeling of utter devotion, and relief, and surrender poured from me as my arms encircled the man holding me and I gave in to the overwhelming embrace of Severus Snape.

Keeping me under his cloak, he brought a phial to my lips and tipped it into my mouth. I would have drank anything he gave me at that moment, but I recognized the anti-nausea potion he’d given me last year at Spinner’s End.

Like the Apparition, the embrace lasted but an instant before he unwrapped his robes and revealed me to the harsh world again.

I squinted at my surroundings. An already shabby, closet-sized office looked like a cyclone had torn through. Posters of Muggle paraphernalia were slashed and Voldemort’s sigil was burned into the walls. Severus and I were crammed in with two dusty desks, one of which was hacked near to pieces.

Arthur Weasley’s old office.

Severus was pointing his wand to each corner of the room in turn, warding it entirely. When he finished, he turned to me and it was all I could do not to make a sound. If I hadn’t just smelled him I would think a ghoul had taken his place. There were hollows under his eyes and his already pale skin was sallow and waxy. His usually burning gaze was absent, devoid. Empty.

He was a dead man walking.

“Scrimgeour did not set up the meeting,” he said in a flat voice. “In a matter of minutes he will be dead.”

“What?”

“I will send you back to U.C.N. Destroy the portkey and do not return. Do not return ever again.”

“Severus, I don’t know what is happening. Dumbledore, what you are in all of this. But I know you didn’t want—” I was cut off when he clutched a hand around my throat.

“You are too trusting,” he hissed coldly. “It will get you killed.”

I looked him in the eye. Didn’t he know what I would be willing to do for him?

“Why do you not Occlude me?” he asked in a strangled, angry voice.

Like a little girl again, I felt defiant and vulnerable. “Maybe I can’t.”

“Lying!”

“Then I don’t want to.”

He let me go. Distantly, he said, “I should never have involved myself with you.”

Hurt washed over me.

A barely perceptible movement in his Adam’s apple. Then, resolved. “Good. Close yourself to me.” He turned his wand to the embassy portkey in my robes.

In desperation, I burst out, “What do they have for you I don’t? You’re willing to die for the already Dead when there’s somebody here waiting for you amongst the living?”

A fury rose in him, the first sign of vigor since I’d arrived.

I looked pleadingly at him. _Please._

Just when it looked like he might refuse as he had done last year, he brought both hands to the sides of my head and stared so penetratingly into my eyes they felt as if they might catch on fire.

I was hit with a blast of Legilimency I had never experienced, even in Saito-sensei’s most advanced lessons. Except rather than my own memories coming forth, they were his, a trove of them all at once, so many piled atop one another I could not separate them. It lasted but a few seconds and then it was over, and he withdrew from my mind.

I reeled and would have fallen but he caught my arms and steadied me.

With his wand once again on my portkey, he began murmuring an incantation and a blue glow came from the pocket of my robes. He had broken into the embassy enchantments.

His black eyes looked into mine and I knew I had only a second.

Without thinking I said, “Say it.”

Like a bell, like a hollow cry, like a man’s last song.

For the first time, he said it.

“Adeline.”

Then he activated my portkey. The last thing I saw before I was wrenched away was the dark swirl of his Disapparation.


	21. Exile

2 Aug - 1 Sep 1997

All Ministry ambassadors were granted permanent asylum in our chancery countries. Akingbade himself fled to his native Uganda and took refuge at Uagadou. His last missive to us was to stay in our appointed magical republics. If we so chose to return to Britain, we surrendered that asylum and he would not be able to protect us.

_You will be on your own_ , his message read.

But I was already on my own.

Morwenna left the post for a safer life with her fiancé in Brisbane. My other attachés went back to their native countries to seek other employment. With the Ministry fallen, Britain officially had no more delegation in the International Confederation. Or rather, not a one who agreed to represent the new regime. So I remained at the embassy in Taipei as a mere guest.

If you aren’t keen to mince words: I was an exile.

The three U.C.N. territories had always been relaxed in attitude. They were so tiny; all they wanted to do was resist being swallowed up by Dark-infiltrated Muggle governments. Negotiations with Wizarding China to rejoin U.C.N. had been underway when the Ministry fell, and now they were stalled indefinitely as we waited to see what position China would take. U.C.N. was happy to host me indefinitely, so long as I didn’t threaten this tenuous position.

Everybody was waiting. Even France, the UK’s closest magical ally, didn’t send wizards over the channel to help.

Everybody just wanted to survive.

My parents quietly planned their departure, a reverse escape to the one the Changs made almost sixty years prior. Because my mum was born in Taiwan, it was easy for them to make the move and they arrived within a fortnight with a passel of trunks. Although my grandparents were deceased, my parents chose my mum’s childhood home outside Kaohsiong. I promised to visit their cottage every Sunday for supper.

Chinese mothers aren’t like English ones, unless it’s Bill and Charlie’s mum. It didn’t matter how many years I’d lived on the other side of the world on my own, or how many powerful wizards had taken my counsel in that time. Under their roof my parents saw me as a toddler who could barely tie my own trainers. My dad spent the mealtime imparting wisdom on every topic he could think of, some advice so sage he repeated it as if he hadn’t told it to me the week before. My mother stuffed a hamper full of food before I left, as if there were no way I could have kept myself alive all these years without her.

It was endearing at twenty-four in a way it hadn’t been at fourteen. The truth was, I _hadn’t_ been eating well. The summer had taken its toll on me. On all of us. My father had no choice but to keep working for the Death Eater-controlled Ministry up until the day they escaped abroad. His blood was the purest of pure and my mother’s family, the Su’s, were also the U.C.N. equivalent of the Sacred Twenty-eight, but they were both known translators during the First War. No doubt they were being watched. They showed up in Taiwan grayer; all of us thinner from worry.

Every day I scoured the Daily Prophet for anything resembling real news. On the first of September, Severus opened Hogwarts as Headmaster.

His photo stared at me, unblinking. I was torn between framing the paper and burning it.

I couldn’t look at those black eyes. Not after I had picked apart the jumble of memories he had given me at the Ministry and seen.

Now I knew. Of the black-haired boy and the auburn-tressed girl.

I never wanted to be the girl who chased the boy. After Bill, I saw what happened to girls that pined uselessly after men who, whether out clear lack of interest or some "noble" cause, were simply unavailable. Tonks was listless and depressed for over a year before she finally landed Remus—and that was a success story.

The overwhelming others were not.

I blamed only myself. I’d asked no promises. He’d made none. And now, I had no recourse.

I couldn’t hold on. Not like this.

Not when I would always be playing second best.

If there’s one thing I’ve known since the age of six: no one can ever compete with a memory. Man cannot be made to give up the ghost; that must be done willingly. It had taken me seventeen years to put down my futile chase, and only because I, without knowing, had taken up another.

Sometimes longing for what is gone is easier than desiring something present that can never be had.


	22. Honeymoon

31 December 1997

The first few months in exile were some of the hardest I’d endured—not because I hadn’t been through enough in my youth, but because I was no longer a child who could react in childish ways. I could not disappear from my responsibilities; there were now many.I could not rebel by breaking every school rule, or throw myself into strange arms every weekend.

There was no professor to save me.

This New Year’s Eve found me atop Alishan, on a cliff inaccessible to Má guā. Their lights glittered in the distance, and the water lapped blackly against the coast of this lush island. Even the insects were quiet in the winter night.

My life had become a largely silent one.

There was no one to confide in that I wouldn’t endanger or who wouldn’t endanger me. I certainly could not turn to even my oldest friends: Chiara with her new baby quietly trying to stay safe in South Dublin. Tonks, about to give birth while juggling the Order and a werewolf husband. Even Kenzo was starting a family, preparing to propose to his pregnant girlfriend. It seemed everybody was moving forward with life, with the urgency seen in times of war, and I was merely standing amongst them trying to look useful. I had no lover, no job, not even a Crup to look after.

I had only my memories, so sharp I didn’t need a Pensieve to relive them.

As I looked out onto the lonely sea, into the past year I went.

* * *

28 Dec 1996

For Christmas holiday last year I had had my usual fortnight’s leave. Aurors ferried my parents to my sequester at the Ministry until Boxing Day, and after that, I was free to holiday where I liked.

I spent it at Hogwarts. With him.

The school had largely emptied for Christmas break and every student that left seemed to take a straw off Severus. Typically we met in his office, I taking the low road through the dungeons, he the high through a colleague’s fireplace after a conveniently timed meeting. Our interludes were brief and frantic, snatched between office hours and his patrol, or during a mealtime though I thought he looked too gaunt as it was.

But now I was brought into his living quarters for the first time, apparently the only erstwhile or current student in history to do so. I smiled over that fact at length, though I said nothing. I had taught myself not to ponder his past.

Not since Spinner’s End had I a whole night in his bed and I basked on his plain linens deep into the morning. Severus still rose at dawn; the man ran like clockwork and not even a late night’s exercise could sway his schedule. Me, I was always the last one in my office chair at the embassy in the mornings—and I lived there. If I weren’t the Ambassador, I would have been sacked long ago.

Severus brought our meals to his sitting room. When I finally arose, he would vacate his lone armchair and draw the straight-backed wood chair that had housed a pile of books before my arrival.

It positively felt like a honeymoon.

One weekend when most of the remaining students had gone to Hogsmeade, we even dared stroll the courtyard together, pausing to sit under the bare branches of a bony tree. I wore my embassy cloak as I did anytime I traversed the grounds, to give the air of official business were I to be seen. Severus cast a warming spell around us, then murmured, “Muffliato.” That was a new one for me.

Cocooned together thus, I asked him what I had wondered for five years.

“That Easter,” I began. He didn’t turn but I sensed him listening. “Were you in my mind? Is that how you knew about Bill?”

“No,” he answered calmly. “I avoid using Legilimency on students unless there is no other recourse.”

That’s right, he had mentioned it during my first visit.

“I know when a witch has conceived,” he said. “There are no thoughts at that early stage, as there is no mind to think any, but there is a presence.”

“A mental Homenum Revelio.”

“So to speak. More faint. However, with practice, one can discern the father.”

“Like thumbprints. Or signatures.”

“Unfortunately, some students sign theirs inordinately more times than others.”

My heart gripped. Bill.

“Weasleys,” he confirmed. “Prolific as rabbits. I knew it was the eldest boy because you carried the same signature as Miss Haywood. And if I am not mistaken, were left in a similar state of mind.”

I felt a cold chill run through me. Penny? 

“She didn’t miss any school,” I said. “So she also took care of it.”

“Correct. Quickly, I presume, given her proficiency in Potions.”

Guilt, then anger rose in me. Why had I not tried harder to reach her? Why had we all wrinkled our noses at her erratic behavior, her increasing penchant for draughts and drink since that fifth year? By not looking deeper, I had fallen into the same hole.

“This was beyond your ken as a student. It was I who should have stepped in.”

I looked at him. “Like you did for me.” Then, understanding, “That’s why you did for me.”

“It is a harsh sentence to spend a lifetime paying for a mistake,” he said stiffly.

“Not only was I spared repayment, but my course charted in quite the opposite direction. Still, it was beyond your duties. Where was Pomona for Penny? You have your own House to look after.”

“This would never happen in my House.”

In my school days the Gryffindor in me would have bristled at the Slytherin pomposity. But now that I was under the Ministry’s employ, I had access to the numbers in the Education department and he was absolutely correct. Of the four, Gryffindor had the highest unintended pregnancy rate—likely due to our hubris that made us reckless. Hufflepuff the second—they were too nice to say no. Ravenclaw was a far distant third, much too well-read to deign to such a misstep. And Slytherin, in the fifteen years since Severus had become Head of House, had zero.

“How on earth do you keep your students from…I know you lot are randy devils.”

His lips curled. In addition to the nuances of his grumbles, I was now beginning to distinguish between smirks. This one had an amused quality.

“At what age did I take this posting?”

I counted using my brother as reference like always. Severus was almost four years older than Jacob. “Twenty-one.”

“The upper classes still remembered me. And as you might imagine, I remembered being one of them.”

I pictured him instituting a House-wide chastity spell and chortled. “You can’t possibly enforce a—”

“Do not be ridiculous,” he snapped, sounding very Head of House. I had a sudden urge for detention, which garnered a raised eyebrow but, sadly, he continued speaking. “We are a self-preserving House, which includes prevention. I am not given over to romanticized notions of childhood as my colleagues may be. I will not abandon my students to ignorance when there is a plethora of options at their disposal.”

“You didn’t teach your entire House the male birth control spell?”

Now he turned to me at last. “That, minx, is only for you.”


	23. Hogmanay

1 January 1997

Professor Snape was, sadly—in the eyes of all parties, made a chaperone on the eve of the New Year. It was one of Dumbledore’s subtle moves that gave me cause to believe he indeed knew every coming and going at the castle, even during his mysterious absences that year. Even so, were it a comment on us, he had not put paid to it. So the remaining students downed Butterbeer and greeted the midnight hour under a watchful scowl, while under their feet, I slipped into Severus’ sleeping quarters.

It was five minutes past when I heard the wards come down outside his sitting room; I was just lighting the fireplace. I imagined Severus irritably corralling students in full Snape fashion until the Hall speedily emptied. It was undoubtedly the earliest the Common Rooms had ever been locked down on a first of January.

From the sitting room came a swoosh of fabric as he doffed his robes and sent them sailing to their hook. I watched curiously as a wood board came floating into the bedroom, carrying upon it a dark cake covered in a rich crust and bearing the unmistakable fruity, gingery smell.

Black bun.

A lump of coal dropped from mid-air onto the dresser in front of me. Next to it, a speck of salt grew into a pile with a sandy tinkling.

Then a dark-haired figure filled the doorway to the bedroom, a bottle of whiskey in his hand.

I broke into a wide smile. He had just done a Scottish first-footing.

“Now I’ll eat like a queen all year,” I said.

I dug into the cake as he began the lengthy process of undoing his coat buttons. It had been ages since I had had a traditional Hogmanay. My family celebrated Lunar New Year more heartily, inviting Cho’s parents over and sending the two of us owls bearing moon cakes and lucky galleons in red envelopes. Cho hated it; she was a Scottish lass all the way and it embarrassed her to open the packages in the Great Hall. I was quite popular during that time of year, with kids crowding around me for a taste.

Severus picked up the whiskey bottle. With his wand, he sailed two glasses underneath and they vied for a spot as he poured.

“I’ll just have a wee dram…” I trailed off as a glass filled with barely enough for a sip hovered over to me.

“You cannot handle any more than a ‘wee’ one.”

I flushed with pleasure as I did anytime he teased my vernacular, or noted a detail about me. Just when it seemed he didn’t care…although—

“Did you not want to exchange gifts last week?” I said.

“What would you like?”

I put down my glass. “I want you to award Gryffindor points this year.”

He took a long time finishing his whiskey. When the glass at last came down on the dresser, he turned to me with a stalking look that made me shrink like prey.

“Disrobe.”

My hands went to the clasp at the wide boatneck of my dress and released it. I pulled one arm out, then the other. Next I unrolled the material down over my chest. I was not wearing a brassiere. I tugged the dress over my stomach, past my hips, and let it fall to the floor. There were no underpants either.

“On the bed.”

I obeyed.

He began the lengthy process of undoing his coat buttons. Finally, he slipped the coat off and released it into the sitting room to join the robes. He removed his cravat and it too draped itself into its designation on his tie rack. With protracted precision, he unbuttoned his shirt and allowed it to fold itself. He stood in his vested union suit and trousers, the Dark Mark blacker than ever.

With a sudden explosive movement, his wand flew into his hand with a dominating smack. Just as quickly he loomed over me. He tapped the dark wood briskly against the soft part of my inner thigh.

“Open.”

My legs parted, the sting of the wand slap tingling.Severus brought his wand to my mouth, dragging it across my lower lip and parting it from the top one.

“You say I never give points to Gryffindor?”

He lowered the wand to the side of my neck, tracing my clavicle with it, then into the valley between my breasts and over the curve of one. With the tip, he circled my nipple, making me jump.

“Quiet.”

But I couldn’t be. He brought an unwilling sound with each agonizingly slow circle.

“I said quiet.” This one was menacing. He grabbed my mouth with a strong hand and held me in place. Now I could moan into it.

The wand slapped my thigh again. “Keep those legs open.”

I squealed into his hand and immediately the sting on my skin was replaced by softness. His mouth next moved between my thighs.

“Perhaps,” he said, lips against me, “Gryffindor has not earned it.”

There he brought me right to the edge, where he stopped and stood over me again. He held his wand aloft.

Pronouncing very carefully, he said, “One…hundred…thousand points to Gryffindor.”

A shower of minuscule rubies erupted from the tip of his wand, raining onto my nipples like thousands of tiny sharp points on my heightened skin. With a swift motion, he plunged two fingers into me and moved the wand down so that the rubies poured unendingly where his mouth had just been, beating against me in a sparkling jeweled waterfall.

As my hips seized in their telltale sign, he said above me, “Never say I am not charitable.”

It was the first, last, and only time Severus Snape ever gave Gryffindor points.


	24. Marked

4 January 1997

It was our last afternoon together before I was to return to U.C.N. and the Hogwarts Express would bring the students back, when I finally drummed up the courage to ask my oldest question.

When I was a wee child, the prospect had been too frightening to consider. As I came of age, I had no one to ask, no one who could be trusted, who could also answer with any authority.

Until Snape.

“When you were with the Death Eaters,” I said quietly, “did you ever see Jacob?”

He regarded me for a moment.

Then, “No.” He answered so firmly and soberly I knew he understood what I was afraid of.

Blinking rapidly, I looked way. “Did you ever…did you know him?” I had never asked before, afraid of the answer either way. But now the words came out in a rush, “He had a late birthday. You would have been a fifth-year when he started. He was a Gryffindor like me. He looked—” I stalled. “Like me.”

I turned to him, as if my face might jog his memory. But he only said, quietly, “I did not. I am afraid, by then, I did not count many Gryffindors as friends.” There was a bend to his tone, but when he met my eyes there was no callousness there.

My despondency must have shown, because his hand lifted as if to reach—

A wince flashed across Severus’ face. He yanked his coat and shirt sleeve up his left forearm. The snake branded there flexed and coiled grotesquely on his skin. He listened to something I couldn’t hear, then shot to his feet.

“Go back to the Ministry and portkey out.” The Mark pulsed again and he flinched. He looked around wildly, then recollected himself. “No. Stay within the castle. Do not leave these quarters. Do not be seen.”

His robes were still flying onto him as the door closed behind him. The protective spells clicked back into place.

* * *

Someone was in Snape’s stores.

It was well past nightfall and he hadn’t returned. I was picking at the meal I had a house elf Apparate to me with, when one of the globes on Severus’ mantelpiece lit up. The middle one.

This was dangerous. While breaking into his classroom would garner any number of prized ingredients, the stores attached to his office held items that could kill a student instantly, or spread a toxin throughout the school. There is not a professor here whose instructions I as a student hadn’t vagrantly flouted—except for Snape.

Tonight would have to be a first.

Wand ready, I crept the few meters down the corridor to his office. The door was ajar. There was no sound from within.

Wondering if I was being incredibly foolish, I slipped inside. The door instantly clicked shut and locked, sealing me in complete darkness.

Hands grabbed my arms and twisted them behind me, pulling my wand from my fingers. A single torch lit up.

Before I could scream, a hand yanked my head back by my hair. I smelled leather, and something else.

“Why are you out?” Severus’ deep voice hissed. “I told you not to leave.”

“Your globe lit up,” I gasped. “I thought someone was breaking in.”

“Even as a child you were always sticking your nose where it didn’t belong.” The humane Severus from earlier was gone. This harsh tone was closer to the Death Eater I encountered in our rushed trysts during term time.

And just as it did to his roughness then, my body responded now. My skin electrified as I inhaled his scent, with that added element. As my senses heightened, I knew what it was. Darkness. He was seeped in it.

“Where were you?” I breathed.

“That is not your concern.” He wrapped his hand more tightly in my hair, causing my back to arch. Against me I felt it. The hardness.

I ached for it.

“Why won’t you just tell me?” I had never spoken like this before. In the same way he would never try to ask me for state secrets, I didn’t use our interludes to interrogate him on his political activities. We kept the rest of our lives out of what we were doing.

But I was tired. We held secrecy against every single person in our lives. I could no longer remember why we had to have it with each other.

“You don’t think I would understand?” I pressed on.

“Oh I know you do,” he said darkly. He said a sudden incantation and my dress tore and fell in shreds. His fingers hooked the gusset of my underpants and ripped them from me in one violent motion. The cold air coming off the stone walls hit my skin all at once.

“I can see it in you. I see your desire for justice...” His warm hand dipped between my legs. “For revenge. I see the hatred for those who would betray you…” My hips rocked against his hand. “…and the ones you care for.” I closed my eyes and let the sensation bring me down into subspace. “And most of all, I see your understanding of the power that Darkness holds—the true power—that even Death Eaters cannot comprehend.” His fingers kept circling until I opened to him.

I could no longer speak aloud. _You see, I am like you._

"No." His hand left. I veritably whimpered to be touched again. “You are not at all like me. You are good.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but his bare, searing heat nestled suddenly against me and he thrust into me, and a strangled sound was all that came out.

It made me angry to hear him say that. Partly because I wasn't good. Partly because I didn't want to _be_ good. I couldn't take the corset of good any longer. I wanted to come apart.

He scoffed at my thoughts. “You do not think you are good? Miss Snyde’s Christmas gifts wrapped themselves every year, did they?”

He knew about that. Of course he did. He knew everything Slytherin House got up to.

“It's only because my own holidays were such shit,” I panted. “It was easier to feel sorry for someone else.”

He brought my head against his shoulder suddenly and looked down into my eyes.

“Do not. Try to be somebody you are not,” he said with such brusque intensity I could only nod, breathless from the fullness of him inside me. “You are…” He took in my face, alighting on each feature as if committing it to memory, before gazing intently into my eyes again. “I would not change it.”

With that, he let my hair go and cut the torch, plunging us into inky blackness. With a strong hand on the back of my neck, he bent me over his desk in earnest and spoke to me of the things that happen to good girls who play too close to the Dark, depraved things that sounded glorious in his hypnotic voice and spurred me on until I had the screaming, bucking release I sought.

In all his gruffness I hadn’t seen it, what I did now a year later. That night was the closest he’d ever gotten to professing what he thought of me.

* * *

31 December 1997

The Evans girl never loved Severus. Not the real Severus.

Not like I did.

She only loved the hurt little boy who taught her all his Potions tricks and followed after her like a dog. She could never accept his Darkness—the Darkness in all of us.

I didn’t fault her. Not many can.

Only those of us who have lived through strife and are honest about our loss can know the unfillable hole that will alway hunger for something we'll never get back. You don't need to be a Death Eater to know the fear of death and the desire for immortality.

Nor be a Death Eater to prey on the weak. It seemed quite a few Gryffindors before me craved power aplenty. And in the end she still stood with them.

She wanted Severus to be the boy who stayed victim, who did nothing while her thug boyfriend and his goons, no different than Crabbes and Goyles, tormented someone for being better, quicker and more intelligent than they were.

I wanted the man who got back up and fought. This man had looked Death in the eye—and victored.

She needed him to be someone he wasn’t before she could accept him.

I embraced him for exactly who he had become and I never asked him to change.

And still, he was standing with her.

I had never longed for a normal life. I didn’t want children, or to live in the same house I lost Jacob in. Most witches left Hogwarts with troupes of lifelong friends; I barely spoke to my only two. I’d run as far as possible—to the other side of the world and, somehow, started to feel a sense of...not home, but familiarity.

For someone who only ever partially belonged, it was good enough.

All along, I had settled for just good enough, never asking for more, never saying what I didn’t dare hope for.

And now, I watched the year disappear alone on the highest peak of _Alishan_ , in love with a man who loved another.

_Illustration by[Zephyr_Zult](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zephyr_Zult)_


	25. Sentenced

1 Jan 1998

At times I reasoned that he wanted me to stay away for his benefit. He couldn’t take another distraction.

Then other times I knew that was just my own yearning for self-importance. I wanted to think he could care for me or about me, the way he had when I was a student. That perhaps a tiny part of him could be swayed from his task by my mere presence. But I know it’s just my own hubris. Nothing could change his mind.

Nothing could change his heart.

His own words came back to me. _It is a harsh sentence to spend a lifetime paying for a mistake._

He had made a mistake and he was willing to pay with his life. Is there ever any mistake so great? I knew the painful, truthful answer: only when there is a love equal to it.

Well I also had a great love.

* * *

“ _Juing Juing_? What time is it? What’s the matter?” My mother’s whisper filtered through the dark kitchen. She blinked at me in her dressing gown. I waved her off before she could light the fire.

“Nothing. Where’s Dad?”

“He’s sleeping. What’s wrong with you?”

“Wait.” I waved my wand around us. “ _Muffliato_.”

“I haven’t heard this one.”

“A friend taught it to me.” Even with the spell, I switched to English for an extra level of security. “I need to ask you something.”

We sat at the table. My mother conjured hot water and we cupped our hands around the warm cups. The action made me feel like two women for the first time, instead of parent and child. It struck me at that moment how easily I had taken to U.C.N. culture, and how that might be why. Kenzo always teased me for climbing so high in government, but the value of my title hadn’t been in its prestige, or even the benefits or the pay. Staying in U.C.N. had given me something I’d never known was missing as a child: a shared history, a longer story I was a part of. A world now opened to me greater than Hogwarts, older than Britain. One that I hoped held answers I could find nowhere else.

“Is it true that there are wizarding tribes out here that have specialized…strengths?” I wasn’t sure how to ask the question, but my mum’s instincts kicked in.

She narrowed her eyes. “What are you looking to do?”

I bit my lip. For her own safety, the least she knew the better. I started carefully. “I’ve been taking Occlumency lessons with Saito-sensei—”

“I heard.”

“You did?” Crikes, the wizarding community was gossipy.

“You never tell me anything, I have to hear it from others,” she chided, sounding motherly again.

I didn’t want to know what else she may have heard. Shaking my head, I said, “What if I needed help in the other direction, and the information is…classified?”

She regarded me shrewdly. “Not for the embassy.”

“No.”

My mum paused, then burst like a dam. “ _Shěn shen_ said Cho saw you going down to the dungeons at Hogwarts last year. She said you know that Death Eater who took over your school. Your professor.”

_Bloody hell, that little clipe._

“Are you involved in something—”

“No!” I held my hands up. “Does Auntie think I could have kept my job if I were treating with Death Eaters?”

“That’s not what she thinks. Maybe you’re a spy.”

I muffled a laugh of disbelief. “You think I’m subtle enough?”

“Not at all.”

I took a deep breath. “What I’m looking for might help the war.”

“ _Juing_ ,” she cautioned. “You are not to get involved.”

“I’m not worried about my job, Ma.”

“Neither am I! I’m worried about your life if they revoke asylum!”

We stopped, quieting to make sure we hadn’t woken my father.

“What is this really?” she asked at last.

If I’d thought to hide from my mum, my efforts were pointless. I’d begun my wizarding career convincing dangerous Má guā of whatever I needed them to believe, but I was no match for a witch who had grown up in U.C.N. during its darkest hour. She who had begun her own career sending dangerous transmissions to my father could read between any line.

That was it. That was something she could understand. She had to.

“Did _a gong_ and _a ma_ know what your job was?”

She pursed her lips. Perhaps it was a cheap shot to bring up my grandparents. But she replied, “No. It would have worried them.”

“But you did it anyway. For the First War.”

“It was the least I could do. It was so small.”

“Every action feels so small.” I looked at our hands, mirrored around our cups. Her wedding ring caught the moonlight through the window. She never took it off, even when sleeping.

“But it wasn’t,” I said. “It was brave. We got that from you.” The woman who had birthed two Gryffindors.

She sighed. “Not as brave as whatever you’re about to do.”


	26. Island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thus begins Part III: Island

Part III: Island

30 April 1998

The blindfold wasn’t real, but I would have bet you the Chang vault at Gringotts that it was. My terror at being ripped blindly from my broom was very real, even as I was instantly held aloft in the air as if on a cushion that floated me gently down until my boots touched rock—I assumed the crag of jagged black rock I had seen before. I had wondered how I was going to land on them but that question was now answered as something led me sightlessly.

It was not a hand that led me, but an inner guidance, as if I were a bird who instinctively knew where to fly in winter. My feet knew where to step; I walked as normally as if I were strolling a park. I had never experienced anything like it.

After a slight incline, the terrain changed to softer ground and I was led again by this internal nudge to seat myself upon a firm surface. A presence sat opposite me, one I sensed more than heard. It spoke, and I heard it simultaneously in both my languages.

“Who do you believe you are?” 

I tried Chinese first. “I’m called _Zhang Tien Juing.”_ It came out in both languages.

“Your Chinese is worse. We will speak English.”

He would receive no argument from me. Like Muggle governments, English was the international language for the Wizarding Ministries so I only used Chinese colloquially in my limited time outside of work. After seven years in U.C.N. I was fluent, but I couldn’t get rid of the awkward western accent.

“Who do you believe you are?” he repeated.

“Adeline—” I was about to answer, but it didn’t matter what language I used. It wasn’t my name he was asking for.

“I’m from Hogwarts,” I started again. “I came here because…”

Nothing sounded quite right.

“I…am on a quest,” I said slowly.

“That is true.”

“I’m trying to help my side win the war.”

“False.”

“I’m trying to save someone’s life.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m trying to find answers!”

“Closer. But a tangential result. Who do you believe you are?”

I’m an ambassador. I’m a Gryffindor. I’m the daughter of Macon and Syringa. I’m a crying child who can’t find her brother. I’m a witch among Muggles. I’m yellow in white, British in U.C.N. I’m small. I’m angry. I’m hurting. I’m lost. I’m alone.

I’m so alone.

I’m so lost.

“I…”

Everything was quiet. I didn’t even know if he was there anymore.

“I am…”

When it came down to it, I had nothing and I knew even less. I didn’t believe anything about myself anymore.

“I…I don’t know.”

There was no sound. Then birds began chirping again. The mental blindfold melted off.

I opened my eyes.

* * *

March 1998

My mother had told me what she learned in Mahoutokoro about the indigenous traditions of witchcraft and wizardry, but it wasn’t extensive. Her school was careful with what they taught and how they taught it.

“You could not have found a more Dark Arts-fearing place if you looked,” my mum said of her alma mater.

The tribal ways were not necessarily Dark, but Mahoutokoro, like Hogwarts, had a prejudice towards classical training. At least they gave nod to other traditions, if only theoretically. Hogwarts barely acknowledged anything outside their narrow curriculum; even Divination was laughed at.

It was what my mum picked up outside of her education that proved more promising. Growing up in the south, she had heard the hedgewitch tales, mostly rumors and legend, of the aboriginal natives of both this island and others in the Pacific. Stories of entire villages who could fly since infancy, of wizened warlocks hundreds of years old who could run like young men. And of a witch whose mind was so powerful, she could sway rulers from across the seas. The grandmother of Legilimency.

This was the tale I was interested in.

It drove me to libraries and private collections where I pored over old books; to rural homes and seedy undergrounds, where I spoke with any magical person or being who might have some information of this master Legilimens and the tribe she led.

With each bankrupt conversation my anxiety grew. There was no further news about Severus, which meant he was still alive and heading Hogwarts. But the bounty on Harry Potter was getting higher every week. It was only a matter of time before he was found, and then what was going to happen? Whatever plan Dumbledore had embroiled Severus in would no doubt come to pass, and no matter how I worked out the possibilities, they all came to no good end for him.

In my desperation, I entertained all leads, no matter how useless or bizarre. I watched children touted as prodigies perform nothing more than parlor tricks, and even an impressive Crup who would retrieve anything you silently pictured, no matter how far.

Five hours after I’d left his home, a wet nose nudged my hand as I sat at a witch-run streetfood shop two towns away. The dog wearily dropped a rolled parchment at my feet and lolloped off, forked tail waving. Bemused, I wiped off the saliva against my trousers and unrolled it.

It was a map no bigger than a schoolbook, showing an expanse of blue and a single island. There was no compass rose. I turned it every which way but it looked the same.

Frowning, I tried to remember what I’d pictured to the dog earlier today. Starting easy, a soup spoon. Next a flower from the bush outside, then a pastry from the Má guā cafe two streets away. We’d paid the owner who chased after the Crup, then after she insisted on passing on the name of a veterinarian, we modified her memory so that the dog appeared to have a single, intact tail. I’d taken my leave then, praising the animal’s talent but dejected that I was no closer to any clues.

Clues.

I had wished for just one, real clue to the titan Legilimens.

Gripping the map tighter, I bent to examine it again when a shout arose. A red-faced witch came hurrying up the pavement, waving agitatedly at me. 

“Thief!” she puffed.

People passing turned to stare.

“That’s mine!” She lunged for the map but I reflexively clutched it to my chest.

“Witches,” the proprietor hissed, “you are drawing attention. Take care of this in my office!”

I gathered my satchel and hurried into the building behind us, the red-faced witch following with loud remonstrations.

Once inside the tiny shop, she snatched the map out of my hand. “I should report you to U.C.N. authorities.”

“I _am U.C.N._ authority,” I said, brandishing my defunct portkey.

She gandered at the emblem, then glared. “Can never trust bureaucrats,” she muttered. “I haven’t done anything wrong! You can’t seize my property!”

I pointed at the map. “Where is this from?”

“Bought it with _my_ money,” she said defiantly. “Proper channels.”

“That’s not what I mean—”

“Alright, alright. I traded for it, but they got the better deal—”

“I’d like to buy it.”

She stopped short. A shrewd look came into her face. “How much?”

“How much did you pay—er, trade for it?”

“Not as much as they wanted,” she laughed smugly. “I got a deal. I’m very good at bargaining—I mean…” she set her lips together as if chastising them for speaking. “It’s very valuable.”

I waited.

“I’ll take that fancy _authority_ disc you have.”

I gave her a withering look.

She shrugged. “Worth a try.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “How about a government favor?”

“How about money?”

“That’ll do.”

After she’d haggled me to a price she liked, she dropped the scroll unceremoniously into my hand.

“What is the correct direction for this map?” I asked her.

“There is no direction.” She started backing out of the office.

“Wait! What do you mean there’s no direction?”

“There is no direction for this island,” she said, hurrying through the door, “because it doesn’t exist. It’s a mirage!” With that, she swept back out onto the street.


	27. Mirage

I would very much have liked to take a bottle of Ogden’s Old and tuck myself into bed with it for the week, but I was saved by the fact that there was none to be had since the Death Eater-Ministry had embargoed everything coming out of Britain. And by the fact that an entire bottle of anything is unnecessary as I get sloshed off fumes alone.

I had thought I was so very clever. Here I was with no idea what grand plan Dumbledore had concocted to defeat Voldemort, yet, no matter how it ran up, Severus Snape would survive this War and I would be the one to ensure it.

In the eight months since I last saw him at the Ministry, I had reasoned out the scenarios countless times. There would no doubt be an assassination, and perhaps a battle arising from it—a final one. History spun this pattern for Muggles and Wizards throughout time.

Severus was now known as Voldemort’s most trusted Death Eater, so he would be at his side, possibly even deliver the final blow. This placed him in the most dangerous position, which meant my priority was finding a way for him to escape once he had accomplished his mysterious task. I not only needed someplace safe, but one that also had a Healer, in case the worse happened.

_A Healer, is that all?_ I scoffed at myself. If the worse happened, I would need a necromancer.

Many communities would have the means to heal him of even grave injuries, but no one would—not when the world believed him to be the greatest traitor to Dumbledore and our side. I needed to send him to a place that would be able to learn the truth, and quickly enough to save him.

An island housing the most powerful Legilimenses in the world had seemed like the perfect answer. If only it existed.

As always, I could only blame myself. In my overeagerness to find answers, I had asked too few questions and believed too many lies. And as with my useless search for my brother, this quest was likely also at its end.

The map of the nonexistent island lay curled on my bookshelf gathering dust.

* * *

5 April 1998

Qingming Festival is a frantic time for wizards. While Muggles simply have to visit the family columbarium with their food and joss paper for Tomb Sweeping Day, the magical community has to actually visit with our dead family, lest they grow affronted and begin spilling their ghostly forms into Muggle public. If Chinese Muggles think their living families are bothersome, I invite them to try their hand at corralling a horde of cantankerous ancestors who haven’t let death stop them from telling us how we’ve thoroughly ruined our lives and besmirched the good family name.

In my case, this was a bit too close to the truth.

From the day I started at the British embassy in U.C.N., I had dutifully portkeyed down to Kaohsiung on the fifth of April of every single year—except the last. I could have made the excuse that I was back at the Ministry for important meetings, but for the fact that those meetings ended promptly on Friday, leaving me plenty of time to make it back to U.C.N. for the holiday weekend. 

Had I not been at Hogwarts.

All I could do was hope ghosts didn’t love a chat as much as the living as I joined my parents, with tremendous trepidation, in setting a table for fifteen behind their cottage. In ones and twos, the ancestors began arriving, some floating out of the grove, others gliding down the hillside. With this many ghosts traversing the countryside, it’s no wonder the Muggles of this region were so superstitious.

There was no rhyme nor reason who showed up each year. Sometimes modern ghosts would appear, looking so fresh they were almost opaque. Other years ancestors arrived from so many centuries ago that they just sat in sullen confusion at everyone’s clothing and hairstyles.

This year we had a smattering across the board, and a great-aunt even brought her magical Pekingese, who bounded straight through every bush, tree, table, and human leg on its hunt for small creatures. After a while, I got used to the disconcerting chill whenever it passed through me.

My parents and I “served” the ghosts, then ate our portions. Afterwards, we broke off into clusters. My mother entertained, to my relief, the great-aunt with the unruly dog, while my father escorted a set of three-hundred-year-old brothers who were still arguing over a game of Wizard Mahjong they had played while alive, in which the older brother accused the younger of cursing his tiles in the final round to allow the girl he was wooing to win. It was fortunate for us the little brother had done so, for the girl married him and gave him eight children, one of whom became my mother’s ancestor.

I had just bid farewell to a distant uncle who was off to visit his other descendants when I caught sight of a silvery haze disappearing through the cottage wall. I followed it inside and found a girl younger than I was staring forlornly at the kitchen sink.

By her quilted robes I placed her to be at least a century old. She had the two braids of an unmarried maiden. I didn’t ask how she was related to me; it can confuse ghosts to try to pull them out of antiquity.

“This wasn’t here,” she said. Her Chinese had a mainland accent. I hoped mine would be passable. My accent was both Western _and_ Taiwanese. I sounded downright alien to the more ancient ghosts.

“It was a pond,” she continued. “This is where I would meet him.”

Ah. Lost love. The biggest reason ghosts stuck around.

“One day he wasn’t there.”

Tell me about it, lass.

“But I kept coming back. I couldn’t stay away.”

Tale as old as time.

“The village auntie tried to make introductions. To more suitable matches. Chinese wizards.”

“But you wanted _your_ wizard, it didn’t matter who he was,” I said without thinking.

“I didn’t care if he was _shān dǐ rén_ or Chinese.”

I stopped. She had used the old term for the Taiwanese aboriginals. Her love had been an indigenous wizard. I could see why it had caused a furor within her village. It was akin to a pureblood marrying a Muggle.

“The auntie made a match for me with a reputable wizarding family,” she said. “But I took sick before I could marry. Very unlucky for that man’s family.”

“And you haven’t found your _shān dǐ_ wizard…after?” I asked.

“No. He wouldn’t be here.”

“He’s not with his other tribe wizards?”

“There aren’t any more.”

My heart sank. Taiwan’s history was riddled with Muggles who invaded this island and destroyed tens of thousands of years of history and people. It wasn’t any different than the story of every land.

Still, even if the tribe was extinct, his ghost should still be around. “Maybe I can help you find him,” I said, though I knew there was little I, in the living, could do that she, as a ghost, could not do better.

“Impossible,” she said.

“Even if the tribe is no longer—”

“His tribe isn’t dead,” she said as if it were obvious. “They went to _Huànjǐng_ island. You can’t see them anymore.”

I stood very still.

Slowly, I said, “ _Huànjǐng_ island.”

“Yes, the island no one can reach. I know his tribe went there; he always said they would. No one believed me. My village said the island didn’t exist. But I was so sure I could see it. Sometimes, in my mind’s eye.”

She stared into the distance, as if the island were materializing right in front of her. After a moment, she dropped her gaze.

“Maybe they were right. Maybe it’s just an illusion. A _Huànjǐng_.” With tremendous sadness, the maiden ghost drifted into the sink and faded.

* * *

_Huànjǐng._ When the witch who had sold me the map said it, I assumed she meant mirage. But it’s also the word for illusion. A dreamscape. Something that didn’t exist.

Except in the mind’s eye.

* * *

I hurtled through the door to my quarters at the embassy straight to the bookshelf. Pushing aside books impatiently, I found the scroll and unrolled it.

Placing my hand on top of the drawing of the lone island in the middle of the unidentified sea, I said firmly, “ _Portus_.”

Nothing happened. Of course it wouldn’t be so easy.

“Mind’s eye,” I reminded myself. Holding the parchment in both hands, I closed my eyes. But what to picture? All I had was the rendering on this map. What did it actually look like? I visualized the drawing, willing it to take a three-dimensional form. Trees, surely, if it were in this region and tropical. Sand of course…but what color?

How did one picture a place no one has ever seen?


	28. Illusion

30 April 1998

Twenty-five days I picked up the map and tried to force it to reveal itself. On the twenty-sixth morning I looked at it with equanimity and gently placed it back down on the table.

I had hit the valleys and climbed the heights of my search. From gathering every clue, to having a map dropped quite literally at my feet, only to discover it was all a story of smoke and mirrors. Then to hear from my maiden ancestor that it might indeed be real, yet be no closer to arriving there. At this point, giving up felt like a cruel joke.

Only later did I realize it had to be this way.

I had to reach the place where I could no longer be strung along by my refusal to admit defeat. I had to learn, as we all do on the path of adulthood, that what I did next was my choice. And once I made it, I would have nobody to blame.

So I made the choice. I put down the quest.

“Alright,” I said aloud. “I will not wring you out any longer. If this is the end, then I will meet it. I won’t foist my dreams upon you anymore. I won’t try to see what isn’t there. Be at rest. Please be at rest now.”

A tear fell onto the old parchment. I was crying. I had been speaking to myself. I had never given myself the space for allowance, or acceptance. I had never been free.

I closed my eyes and thought of freedom, the few moments I had ever felt it.

When I opened them again I was rushing through clear air, my broom gripped between my hands. By truly giving up, I had, at last, fallen into the space between illusion and belief.

In that space lay Huànjǐng Island.

* * *

After the mental blindfold melted off, I sat in a clearing ringed by stumps. Tree branches around us swayed in a gentle breeze, sending a kaleidoscope of dappled light across the soft wrinkles of the tanned face gazing quietly at me. The man whose voice I’d heard was gone and in his place was an old woman. She was the shaman, and I understood this wordlessly and without comprehension of learning the knowledge.

The level of Legilimency on Huànjǐng Island was unrivaled by anything I’d experienced in the western world. When Severus was in my mind, I felt him as a presence distinct from my own thoughts. I hadn’t felt anyone at all when I was removed from my broom, nor when I was guided blindly into the thicket. Everything felt internal, even the man’s voice that had spoken in dual languages.

And now seated in front of the shaman, we were already conversing without any awareness she had joined my thoughts. Her lips didn’t move as her aged voice smoothly integrated itself into my consciousness.

“So, Lost Girl who does not know who she is, how did you come to be found here?” I had the sense she wasn’t speaking in English, but it was reproducing itself this way because that was the language of my thoughts.

Hoping to avoid any more riddles, I answered directly. “My birth country is at war. The Dark wizard Voldemort has taken over.”

“We know of this.”

“The most powerful wizard we had to stop him is dead.”

“Your Dumbledore. And who killed him?”

I did not pause. “The man I am asking for help to save.”

“The headmaster of Hogwarts.”

“Yes.”

“What is your relation to this man?”

“He is…he _was_ …” I didn’t know what else to use “…my lover.” I tripped over the strange-fitting word.

“No,” she said with the patience one would accord a small, stupid child. “What is _your_ relation to _him_?”

I opened my mouth to answer and there was none. I ended up gaping at her, slackjawed as if I _were_ a small, stupid child.

“I will witness your story,” she said not unkindly. “And we will see if something can—or should—be done.”

My heart lifted for the first time in the nine months since I saw him last.

“Yes,” I said. “Very yes.”

“In order for me to bear a complete witness, two things are needed. The first is breadth. Your complete openness is required. I see you have taken training in Occlumency. You must not fight me, no matter how much your mind is taught. I believe you will not have a problem with this. Your mind seems eager, even desperate to speak.”

_You prattle on endlessly_ , Severus had said. _An embarrassingly loud projector._

“The second is depth. The level to which I can ascertain the true turn of events rests upon how much of the story I am privy to see. Even if I were to access every nook and cranny of your mind, if he is not there, then we are chasing a ghost.”

I’m certainly familiar with that.

“He is an Occlumens.”

“A very good one,” I confirmed. “I would say in his lifetime, only Albus Dumbledore could say he knew this man.”

She only looked at me. “We are not concerned with what Albus Dumbledore knew. We wish to see what you know. Perhaps you know some things of him Albus Dumbledore did not.”

The color mounted in my cheeks. Of course I knew things of Severus Snape no man did. Things I was embarrassed to admit I held on to in painstaking detail. How it felt to be touched in my deepest parts by the hands that mixed potion like a painter, that had also committed violence so extreme he spent his lifetime hiding it away. How he tasted. How his Darkness felt from the inside of me. What it was like to finally fall asleep next to his comforting heat warming my always cold toes. How the time was never enough together, yet certain moments hung in the air outside of time, preserved forever in a glass of delicate otherworldliness.

“Yes,” I said. “I do. Know of him. In our coupling.”

“In body. What of the mind?”

Mine, entirely. His, none at all.

“And what of the heart? Are you wed? Would even the spirit world not rend you asunder?”

I blinked against an unexpected surge of emotion.

His heart could never be wed. Not when it belonged to another. I could never–- _would_ never dare dream a life of normalcy with him, of a union as long as my parents and their parents before them, of a home where the man I went to bed with I would also rise with, day in and day out, one after another the way a simple Má guā would live her life.

The tears came so quickly I didn't have time to wipe them away before they made their way down my face.

The shaman regarded me placidly. “ _You_ are, in your soul. You have given yourself to him long ago. So there will be a trace of you within him. But will there be a remnant of him in you? The question,” she leaned forward, “is whether he has given of himself to you.”

That had always been the question. I never dared ask. The answer seemed too clear.

But she only said, “We shall see.”


	29. Prelude

1 May 1998

It was one o’clock in the morning by the time I was on my broom again. I pushed hard into the frigid ocean air; I could still sleep a few hours before I had to visit Mahoutokoro for the final grand errand. I had a plan now, and with it renewed urgency.

The moment I crossed out of the Occlumency Line, Huànjǐng Island disappeared. I understood now that this was no simple Disillusionment charm that made hiding Hogwarts seem like child’s play. The entire island was suffused with the ability to penetrate a person’s being, as if the power of the shaman and her tribe were staked inextricably to the land.

The Occlumency Line was so powerful it rendered the island nonexistent in everyone’s minds. If, like me, someone managed to fall into the space between illusion and belief that made them eligible to actually find the island, there was then a Legilimency Line which caused the would-be visitor to see a most inhospitable sight—for me, a coastline of angry black rock with no place for a broom rider to gain purchase before being swept under by unpredictable tides; for others, circling sharks or a whirlpool into sure death.

Now that I had been granted access, the island would recognize me, even if I took Polyjuice potion and came in under a Demiguise cloak. I would still have to cross both Lines, but it was now upon me to see through illusion.

I had always had trouble with that.

* * *

Much later that evening after visiting Mahoutokoro, I crawled wearily out of my fireplace to an impatient scratching sound. Outside my window my parents’ mountain scops owl glared at me with his scruffy, brown face. He had only one good eye and he used it with the fury of ten.

“Sorry! I didn’t know you were waiting,” I muttered, letting him in.

He shoved his foot at me and I removed the tiny scroll.

I gave the standard Chinese greeting. “Did you eat? No insects at the moment, but I just bought some fish at the market.”

From the icebox, I withdrew the paper package, unwrapped it and tore a piece for him. He loured at it for a moment, then snatched the raw tidbit, seeming to cheer. After he flew off for further hunting, I charmed the bamboo basket to steam the rest of the fish. While I waited, I unfurled the message. It was from my mum.

_Have you talked to Cho of late? Uncle and auntie have been trying to reach her._

I shook my head. Cho’s parents were particularly overbearing, which may be why she rebelled against our culture so strongly. The girl was almost nineteen and had her own flat in Glasgow, which that Corner kid still visited, presumably for the same reason I used to visit Bill’s flat. She swore me to secrecy and I was a better vault than she had been for me. What did it matter to me; so long as she didn’t make my mistakes, I had quite enough on my mind than the sex lives of teenagers. I had given her a birth control speech that she cut short with a wrinkled nose and an, “Already sorted!”

More than likely she was at a pub with her mates, or out with one of her gentlemen callers. She was nowhere near the trollop I was at eighteen, but Cho was no librarian. Either way, I had more pressing issues than my cousin’s social life. I changed out of my sooty clothes and shoveled my supper before I sought my quill to respond.

It had been a late night on the island and a long day running the difficult errand. The food must have revived me, for as I was sitting at my desk to compose a reply, something about the message struck me as odd. Perhaps it was on my mind given where I’d just been, but the timing was too peculiar. I got up, grabbed a handful of Floo powder and knelt by my fireplace.

My mother was waving her wand over a sinkful of soapy dishes but flitted to the hearth as soon as she saw my head in the flames.

“Where have you been?”

“Mah-” I stopped myself. It wouldn’t do to divulge to my mum that I was at her old school. “Errands.”

“You received my owl?”

I yawned. “You know our popularity queen,” I said. “She’s probably out with her friends. What’s it been, a day?”

“Yes,” my mum admitted. “Normally I’d agree with you, but _Shū shu_ ’s worried because he went to fix his broom—did I tell you he almost broke it in half? He should just buy a new one, but you know Uncle. At the shop, he ran into…”

I tuned out. Old habit. I’m not proud, and my mum is better than other middle-aged Chinese ladies with the convoluted storytelling, but she still has her moments. For those moments, I’d perfected my “interested” face. I was bobbing along with my routine of nods and “mm’s,” when I almost missed something she said.

“…at Hogwarts. They couldn’t be sure if it was Hogsmeade, or Hogwarts, but it’s definitely one or both of those. They say even You-Know-Who himself could be there! But I don’t see why she would go—”

“Tonight? The Da—You-Know-Who is at Hogwarts _tonight_?”

“Well that’s what they say, but who can be sure. I certainly wouldn’t go there to find out. I don’t see why your cousin would be there; she already graduated, why would she go back? She knows better!”

Cho, our Ravenclaw Chang, _was_ the one who knew better. So…“Why do they think she did, then?”

“For her friends! I don’t understand either. They all graduated. _Shū shu_ said she’s still close to the younger years.”

I’ll say. Cho was still sleeping with Michael Corner. But surely she wouldn’t risk her life for _him_ —

“I’ll look into it, Ma,” I said hurriedly. “Just…tell them not to worry.” I popped my head out of the fireplace so fast, I bumped the top of it against the bricks.

Rumors of Voldemort at Hogwarts tonight. My cousin possibly there as well. Why would everyone converge at that one place on the same night…it couldn’t be.

Would the battle be tonight—possibly now?

Cho might not have joined the fray for Michael Corner, but there was someone she might go scampering back for: her ex, Undesirable No. 1.

Harry Potter.

If he were there, then this was the night. Now was the moment. I shot to my feet. There would be two of us rushing to Hogwarts tonight.

Chang women: nothing if not loyal.


	30. Stopper

2 May 1998

There is something that happens to me, I now know, when I have been pushed to a breaking point but must continue. My form may persist in whatever activity it must, but my mind declines to participate. It behaves as if it has entirely vacated my poor body, as if to deny the circumstance exists at all.

As such, my memory of the first few hours of the second of May 1998 are an interesting exercise in what Muggles might call postmodern art. Disembodied images from an oddly distant perspective, as if viewed through a window.

The High Street was deserted when I appeared outside Honeydukes; everyone cowering inside their homes or—if they were smart—Disapparated. All I could hear was the sound of my own breathing as I wheeled around dizzily, scanning the deserted town. After hastily preparing back in M.R.O.C., I had used the modified portkey to Hogsmeade. There was now only one use left. As it was during my days in the ICF, no margin for error.

No time for searching aimlessly, either. For a moment I was torn with guilt. Though I was here for Severus, if Cho really had come back, perhaps I should look for her. I squinted up at the castle. From here it was impossible to see, but there seemed to be smoke rising from that direction.

Yet everything was silent. Eerily so.

Perhaps the battle had not yet begun.

Then the voice spoke, and it felt as if the very bony hand of Death had dipped into my skull. The words reverberated in every mind including mine, a warning more felt than heard, so cold my teeth shook. It was the opposite of the Huànjǐng Island Legilimency; this was a cruel, purposeful penetration, designed to leave the recipient raw and violated.

After its speech, it withdrew suddenly, leaving me with a sick ringing in my ears. My mind whirled, examining fragments of Voldemort’s words. It was quiet because he was calling a ceasefire for the hour; he would be in the Forbidden Forest.

The Forbidden Forest—would Severus be there? Surely Voldemort would keep his trusted lieutenants with him.

Unless Severus was sent on a separate mission. Perhaps it was a ruse; Voldemort may have sent Severus to find Harry Potter while the survivors were lulled into complacency and fatigue. There were too many possibilities. Just when I thought my head would spin off my neck, I recalled what I had learned from my day on the island.

I was within him. He was within me.

I closed my eyes.

I shut out the world. The tense night air. The voice that had ripped through my mind seconds earlier.

I thought of Severus. Of his eyes looking into my eyes. His skin against my skin. The rare occasion his lips tasted mine, his warm breath mingled with scotch…

Then I stopped thinking.

My body turned of its own accord.

My feet stepped without tripping.

They stopped and I opened my eyes. Ahead of me stood the crooked path up a hill.

He was at the Shrieking Shack.

* * *

I am squeamish. I always have been. I’ve never even been able to patch up my own scratches from Quidditch, or to watch as Madame Pomfrey pulled bits of grass or splinters from the nastier cuts.

The amount of blood on the floor of the shack was already nauseating me, but to know it belonged to Severus nearly undid me. It was all I could do to go sliding to him, the unbelievable amount of crimson soaking the knees of my trousers as I crouched over his horribly inert body.

His face already looked like a corpse’s, a pallor that reminded me, perversely, of the Inferi we’d faced with the ITF in China. Only there was no Auror to depose of the nightmare.

Only me.

I wanted to scream. Every fibre of my being shook with the effort of holding it back. If I started screaming, I would never stop. That knowledge was the only thing keeping me from losing my mind.

So I stayed silent, and my thoughts continued without me for a minute. I felt anger, inexplicable anger that he had hidden so much from me, sheltered me as if I were still his student, some child that would not be able to understand the world. He should have showed me all this, showed me what was happening so I wouldn’t be hunkered here over his rapidly draining body, so lost, so ineffectual—why was I always so lost?

My mind only spun this far before I reeled it back and took a hold of myself. Drawing a deep breath, ignoring the coppery smell that hit me, I stilled myself.

 _I am here_ , I said to myself. _This is where I am, and this is what I am facing._

A flutter.

I stared wide-eyed, unsure if I had seen it.

_Severus?_

There it was. His eyelid fluttered, just once, weakly, like a butterfly caught in a storm.

“Oh Merlin.” I fumbled in my pocket.

I worked quickly, not daring to think what could happen if someone were to find us, or if something went––

I bent my head and set myself to the task, pressing a hand to his neck while pulling the ampoule out of my pocket.

A stopper in death.

As I shook the tiny glass bottle I thought of the first time I had heard this phrase. The Potions Master who had given this rousing speech to the first years had seemed terrifying and awe-inspiring at the same time. I’d heard he was only twenty-four but had been teaching for three years already, the youngest head of house for centuries and one of the youngest professors in Hogwarts history. Still, twenty-four is horribly grown-up to an eleven-year-old, and I was a small child to begin with. This man in a billowing black robe looked like a dread angel of doom. My own head of house was a stern woman with Scottish no-nonsense, but she had a warmth absent in Professor Snape.

What he had instead was intensity. I’d been drawn to it for over a decade now, first as a student mesmerized by the presence of what seemed to be effortless genius, then as a late teen confused by coursing hormones and crashing emotions.

Now I was the age he was when I first met him. His twenty-four appeared so self-assured, commanding, in control. My twenty-four felt no different than seventeen. Frustrated, disorganized, vacillating between impassioned impulse and paralyzing indecision.

This last year: my quest for a way out, every action I took since I saw the truth of his feelings but made the decision anyway, would be the first time I, too, had absolute focus. I was going to do everything I must to save Severus Snape and then, if I survived, I was going let him go for good.

I held the ampoule up in the dim light to check that it was thoroughly mixed, and broke the seal.

Saito-sensei could easily have refused me. I hadn't bothered Occluding from her; my defenses were no match for her skills. But she had clamped her mind down the moment I Floo-powdered into her fireplace earlier today. It was already a risk entertaining my request. She didn't want to put us in further danger by seeing my plans. I was relieved. Yet another woman I was endangering when I was already in their debt.

She didn’t refuse me, and I had left Mahoutokoro with two precious ampoules of a potion whose name she would not even disclose.

“See that you avoid having to use this ever again,” she had said.

“I hope not to have to use this at all.”

When I had left her office earlier today, I believed my words. Though I had taken this precaution, I didn’t think it would come to this, and in such a dire way. If I’m perfectly honest, I thought I would be the one who had to take the potion.

I braced Severus’ head against the wall he was slouched on and brought the first tube to his mouth. Barely a drop had leaked out when my hand seized, as if my body had suddenly been plunged into a bath of ice.

In the gruesome silence that was suddenly descending, I looked up. One by one, dementors filed steadily into the room, crowding delightedly towards my frozen figure. I thought to scrabble for my wand, but I didn’t want to let go of Severus’ head or the phial. All I could do was watch with falling despair as they glided inevitably closer, my breath misting in the frigid, hopeless air.

My hand holding the potion was lowering, my fingers loosening. I fought to tighten my grip, but one of the dementors was right over me now, drawing me into its shadow. There was no future; I had failed.

Severus was dead.

There was no winning. Giving in was the only way now.

It would be a relief.

As the dementor leaned down, its hooded face offering the kiss of release, my hand opened and the phial clinked to the floor. I could no longer feel my face. I went lax and prepared to meet the welcome journey into blackness.

With a flash of brightness my eyes flew open. The hopelessness was gone, and for a moment I thought the dementor must have finished. But I still felt terrible, and I was still aware of the sticky mess I was lying in.

I struggled to push myself up in time to see a silver streak tear through the cluster of dementors, driving them back. It galloped around and they recoiled, emptying from the room. The Patronus was so vibrant it leapt across the walls once more until every last dementor was gone.

Beside me, the arm holding the wand dropped limply. There was a clatter and I looked down to see Severus’ hand unfurl and his wand roll onto the floor. He once again slumped against the wall, looking even deader than before.

That single drop. It had already done this much. I cast about wildly for the ampoule. It lay in a puddle, its contents spilling into the blood.

I yanked the second tube from my pocket, shook it violently, and broke the seal without checking. I tried to prop his head again, but he had collapsed crookedly after casting the Patronus, and I couldn’t gain purchase while pouring the potion. A growl of desperation came from me. Then I knew, and my body acted before my brain even decided.

Saving someone’s life is never as pretty as the fairy stories make it to be. I tipped the phial into my mouth and dropped the empty glass. With both hands I grasped his face, and used my fingers to wrench his jaw open. Mouth full, I sealed my lips against his and spit the contents as hard as I could, forcing my tongue into his mouth and pushing the potion as far back as I could reach. I held myself there until it seemed like all of the elixir had made it.

No margin for error.

Finally, I released his face and sat back, gasping. He was already drawing a shallow, rattling breath as I pulled the portkey out. I couldn’t slip it into his pocket, it had to touch his skin. So I tore his dripping cravat from his neck and ripped open his shirt collar, now soaked dark red. Shoving the portkey down his wet shirt, I tucked the disc into his union suit, hoping his coat was tight enough to keep it in place against his chest.

My hands were slippery with his blood and I wiped them on my trousers so I could grip my wand. I pointed it at the portkey wedged in his undershirt. At that moment, his eyes began to open.

They were barely slits, but he seemed to be looking at me. I wasn’t sure if he knew what he was seeing.

There was no time; I had to get him to a healer, but I couldn’t help brushing his hair out of his face and saying, “Severus, listen to me. When you get there, you have to open yourself. More than you ever have. Your life will depend upon it.”

Then I looked into his black eyes with mine, and I said clearly in my mind what I felt with the surety of my soul, the three words I could never say out loud for fear he didn’t feel the same _._ It didn’t matter anymore. Even if he had never felt it and never would, I did and I do. And I would for a very, very long time.

A flicker of an expression crossed his eyes. He had heard me.

It was time.

Backing up so that nothing of me touched him, I pointed the wand carefully and said with the greatest conviction I could muster, “ _Portus!_ ”

A blue glow pulsed out of the top of his shirt. With a sucking sound, he disappeared.

Bending, I picked up his wand. That had been an ironclad condition for him to enter the island. I hadn’t looked forward to stealing it off his catatonic body, but in the end he had let go of it himself.

The handle bore his bloody fingerprints. Morbidly, I didn’t wipe them off, just stuck the whole thing into my pocket next to my wand.

Now came the real difficulty: getting me out. My Apparition had never improved. Destination, Determination and Deliberation were the three D’s of Apparition. I don’t splinch because determination is not something I lack. Deliberation however…my impulsivity was once again a liability. It seems any slight waver in one’s decision and the Apparition ends up in an entirely different township. Landing on Severus’ door was the most accurately I have ever Apparated in my life, and that was far from a conscious decision.

I had a very specific destination this time. A target on which it was imperative I land. I could not appear anywhere else on this night of battle, soaked in the blood and bearing the wand of the greatest known traitor in this war.

No margin for error.

I took a deep breath and turned in place.

_Illustrated by[Zephyr_Zult](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zephyr_Zult)_


	31. Aftermath

When the bone-crushing vise released, I found myself crumpled on a worn carpet.Someone gave a horrified gasp. A child began to wail.

“Callum, take the baby.”

I opened my eyes and saw a set of loafers walking quickly out.

“Merlin’s beard, she’s dead.”

“It’s not my blood,” I croaked. “It’s his. He’s…”

“Adi, you’re pale as a ghost. Are you hurt?”

“No...there were—”

Before I could tell her, Chiara said, “Dementors. Hang on, I’ll fetch chocolate.”

“He’s…” I said but she had run to her pantry.

Slowly, still lying on the floor, I looked down. I took in my robes darkened with crimson. The caked, red hands that I had pressed with grisly determination onto Severus’ neck. I felt the weight of the two wands in my pocket, thankfully not on the side on which I had landed.

Chiara returned and slipped a pillow under my head.

“I’ll stain it,” I mumbled.

“Hush. Eat.”

A bar of chocolate was thrust under my nose. I took a bite and forced my stiff jaw to chew. It was unbearably good—too good, too sweet and good for what had happened tonight.

“He’s gone.”

“I know, love. The lot of them are gone. Drink up.” She tilted a goblet towards me and I obediently sipped.

“No, not the lot,” I said. “Just him, he’s…” but the sleeping draught was strong and the rest of my sentence came out as a slurred jumble.

When I came to, the dawn was rising. How dare it. It seemed obscene to carry on cheerily as if nothing had happened. I hated the sun at that moment.

Suddenly I remembered and sat up, my head whirling in protest. Chiara was by my side in an instant.

“I have to go,” I wheezed. “Cho is at the battle—”

“Adi, stop. It’s over.”

“What—what is?”

“The war. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is dead.”

I gaped at her as if she were speaking Mermish.

“We did it. He did it. Harry killed him."

I stared uncomprehendingly. It had worked. Whatever Dumbledore and the Order and Harry and my cousin and Hogwarts had done, had worked. And maybe, the littlest flicker of hope inside me thought, maybe, what I had done might also have worked.

I collapsed into Chiara's arms.

* * *

As soon as I’d regained my strength, I telegraphed my parents that I was safe. But I wasn’t ready to see them. I wasn’t ready to see most people.

I ended up staying a month with Chiara and her husband, plus their infant Kieran. Callum O’Toole was a mild-mannered man who had gone abroad to Ilvermorny and now worked at St. Mungo’s with Chiara. He worked what seemed round the clock, healing all the wounded from the war, wearily trudging straight to their bedroom every night. Chiara even came out of her maternity leave to put in hours each day. I offered to watch Kieran during the day but Callum’s mother adored having her grandson at her house.

Secretly, I was relieved.

My nerves felt ripped raw. Every slight noise startled me. Before she went to work each morning, Chiara left a bottle of blue potion on the dining table for me. The Calming Draught helped, but one morning I put the bottle down still stoppered.

There were things I needed to see, and I wanted to view them with all the untamed, uncorralled emotion that had gotten me into this mess.

The shaman had indeed found something of Severus within me. It was why she had been able to modify my deactivated portkey. Embassy portkeys are tuned to each Ambassador’s signature alone, the same signature that allowed Severus to recognize the father for Penny’s and my pregnancies. This was why I could carry the disc around in my pocket as casually as if it were a piece of chewing gum, without fear of loss or theft—I was the only one who could activate the portkey. It was also charmed to port one person at a time, so that no one could force me to take them into the Ministry or embassy alongside. As a final measure, if anyone somehow managed to break through these protections, the International Portkey Gateways at both ends would repel the unauthorized traveller.

It was Severus himself who gave me the idea for reactivating my portkey at the Ministry on the night of the fall. If he could break into one level of the enchantment so readily, there had to be a way to go further—to alter it to read his magical signature instead of mine.

“This is powerful, strange magic,” the shaman had said. “We do not do this lightly.”

I understood. The island banned portkeys for this very reason—they were too dangerous. Apparition was also not allowed. The only entry was to approach on creatures or brooms like I had, things they could see and block with their Occlumency and Legilimemcy lines.

This would be the only time they would allow a portkey onto the island, and it would be destroyed once he arrived.

“This magic is the opposite of what you call Polyjuice Potion,” she explained. “Instead of taking on another’s body, this object is taking on another soul.”

I had shivered. It sounded a bit like a Horcrux.

What the shaman had seen when she gently walked my mind had been enough for her to allow not only a foreigner to enter the sanctuary with a portkey, but also for her to perform this strong magic for me. She who knew nobody in this fight, who was safer than anyone in the Wizarding world and had no stake in the war, she was willing to risk her people and her home for complete strangers.

Harry Potter. Albus Dumbledore. Lord Voldemort. Severus Snape. These are the names immortalized when anyone speaks of the Second War.A man’s game.

But these are the names in my war:

Azumi Saito. Shaman Granny. Nymphadora nee Tonks. Chiara nee Lobosca. Penny Haywood. Syringa nee Su. Our unnamed maiden ancestor.

Adeline Chang.

These are the women who lived through the same war, whose efforts were no less vital to the ultimate battle of light against Dark.

Our names are not engraved on plaques under statues. But I wear them upon my heart, a scar of courage and survival.

Courage and survival.

Gryffindor and Slytherin.

“Is there enough of him within me to do this magic?” I had asked.

“What he left is interesting indeed.”

“How so?”

“What you showed me was only a portion of the story. The life before and apart from you. Useful, but unfinished. Do you have any idea why he would leave buried memories within you that you have been unaware of?”

I had no answer.

“Would you like to see them?”

I had shaken my head.

“Not yet, perhaps,” she said. “When you are ready you will know how.”

I had left speechless, the modified portkey safely against me as I’d flown away from the island, likely never to see it again.

Now, alone in Chiara’s kitchen, I wasn’t ready. But I had to know.

Courage and survival.

I closed my eyes.

Accessing the hidden layer of memories was the same as finding the island. Just as I had been when I put down my quest, once again I was at the end. I had done what I had promised myself—given everything in my power to save Severus. Now I could let him go.

“I will see behind the illusion now,” I said out loud, and I delved behind the memories into the hidden ones.

This is what I saw.


	32. Underneath

28 December 1996

He liked the rare moments when my hair was down, inadvertently, as when I roused half-sleepwalking to the bathroom in the crepuscular light after he’d already left the bed, unaware that he was still in the room, a shadow in the corner standing sentry like he had the day of the N.E.W.T. examination. He was so used to living and moving in Darkness, it was a wonder to see me, a little fluttering thing of the light, white slip diaphanous in the dawn, padding barefoot across the stone floor with my thick, dark hair trailing across my shoulders so familiar, yet so unalike anything he’d ever felt through his aching fingers. He watched the way I moved, eyes mostly closed, and my small body seemed to him a shield against the ever-encroaching Dark, a self-lighting glow of triumph heralding the day. And in that moment, for only that moment, he could feel.

Fearless.

* * *

1 January 1997

Well before mine, he had heard desirous thoughts from students over the years, especially early in his career when he was barely older than the seventh years. They came mostly from Slytherin girls and even a few boys who hid their inclinations desperately from everyone. The whispers about his past from Death Eater relatives piqued these students who wanted to see if the rumors were true.

They were, all of them, and worse.

He had shut out their feelings that crept towards him like gnats, bothersome but common enough to brush aside. There were times it was harder to ignore, as with the more enterprising witches who devised no end of ways to earn detentions or beg private lessons, then arrived with suspicious-smelling fire whiskeys obviously laced with love potion. But his agenda, his larger task, and the guilt driving it had consumed him; and as the years continued, he all but tuned these thoughts out. Over time, his reputation grew to precede him enough that fear was the overriding reaction he felt from his environment.

It was unfamiliar, then, when he allowed himself not only to act upon his once seemingly endless appetite, but to let in the feeling of being wanted by someone else. It was so overwhelming at moments that he feared I would see everything he had worked for years to hide. 

I projected strongly all the time, but never more so than when I gave myself to him. He was most in danger of losing control then, the effort of maintaining his careful shield almost paining him. The urge to relinquish himself to the ecstasy in each moment tantalized him cruelly.

To resist, he brought himself out of his flesh and focused on mine. On the signals I gave, the sounds and slight movements he stored and catalogued like jars of rare ingredients. He hardly had to read my mind when we coupled, my thoughts reached out to him like pleas and requests. Some he indulged, others he purposely withheld, for he knew I liked best to be surprised.

I gained my pleasure most readily on my stomach, which was a relief in a way, because he wasn’t looking at me then. It was when he faced my eyes that he couldn’t stop the thoughts from arising. Thoughts of what would happen were he to remove the enchantment he cast on himself before each entry. He sometimes saw a child with black eyes—not like his, cold and hiding—but like mine, open, embracing. The thoughts, so out of character, brought such terror to him, yet at the same time they excited him so that it took all his control to keep the spell in place and arrive at a harmless finish, gripping my body in his greedy hands and watching his wild, raving desire to sire upon me float away.

* * *

1 Aug 1997

The day the Ministry fell, when he had arrived at the International Portkey Gate in time to Disapparate with me to Arthur’s office.

The last time he saw me.

How small I had felt in his arms, a warm bundle like a bird fallen too soon from a tree. He had wanted to keep me swathed within his robes for longer, for as long as he could, but my life was too important and danger too near, so unhappily near. So with great difficulty he had unfurled me to the cold, hating the loss he sensed from me when he let go of me. He hated the feeling my reactions aroused in him, the jealousy he felt towards my openness, my unrestrained flow of thoughts and emotions. He would do anything to protect that freedom that I didn’t even realize I had, anything to send me away from him, so far away, so the mess he had made would never touch another person again.

* * *

I wept bitterly at this memory. A mess _he_ had made? Had he not been in the hallways with me on Easter break when I stood there, a shell of a girl reeking of the shambles of my life not even begun, and a month’s missed baths?

It was an insult. Downright.

Had I not stood by him through it all, the ignominy, the rumors, the blackening of his name? Had I not believed in his goodness, in the face of every evidence to the contrary? Returned to him time and again, given every fibre of my being to him, left myself so open I had no more secrets.

Had I not loved this man enough?

I wanted to scream.

I did scream.

Grabbing my wand at the last second to cast that goddamn spell he invented, I howled my way to Chiara’s kitchen floor. There was no one to come running anyhow. Everyone was at St. Mungo’s healing the wounded, rebuilding the Ministry, or tending to their families.

Here on the carpet it was just me and my fury.

My disbelief. My helpless anger, a rage with no outlet, no target.

But I did have one. At last I had one. I’d kept this at bay, but no more.

I was livid at him.

Because what I hadn’t been able to face, why I had such trouble getting on with life, was what happened that night I had saved his life.

When the dementors crowded in upon me and that drop of potion had revived him briefly, he had used that sliver of life to cast his Patronus. The creature had been magnificent to behold: mature, detailed and unrelenting. I could only watch as it leapt across the walls, tossing its proud head, before the silver doe vanished in a swirling mist.

Her Patronus.

The Evans girl.

No matter what I did, or how hard I tried, it would be her.

Always.


	33. Heal

15 May - 1 June 1998

Midway through my stay with the O’Tooles, a light knock sounded against the doorframe of the spare room where I slept.

“Adeline.” Chiara stood in the doorway. “I have to ask about the wand.”

I stared out the window a moment longer before turning.

My friend entered. “Aurors came to the hospital again. We told them the same thing we did weeks ago—he wasn’t brought to St. Mungo’s and no one has heard anything else.” She sat on the bed. “But they can’t find a body and I reckon they’ll keep on this until one can be found…or answers. I can’t Occlude like you. I fear if anyone probes any further they’ll know you’re here, and they’ll discover what I saw in your pocket. The two wands.”

Chiara had changed my blood-soaked clothes after I had gone unconscious that night I Apparated to her living room. When I woke, the two wands that had been in my cloak pocket sat quietly on the dresser, lined up next to each other, black the color of our eyes.

“The other wand. It’s his, isn’t it?”

I sat down next to Chiara. When she looked into my eyes, she didn’t need an answer.

“There are rumors—”

“It’s true,” I said.

Despite having suspected, she looked shaken by my admission.

“The blood. You kept saying ‘It’s his’.” She looked afraid to ask. “Where…Is he…”

I took her hand. “I’m sorry I troubled you. You shouldn’t have to hide anything for me. I’ll take my leave in the morning.”

“Go way outta that, you eejit. You think a secret frightens me?”

I smiled. Her supervisor at St. Mungo’s knew she was a werewolf, but nobody else at the hospital did.

“I’m worried for you, is all,” she said.

“Don’t be. If they want to question me, let them.”

“So then he is…”

“The less you know the safer.”

“Are you two still—”

“No.”

She leaned back on her hands. “Blimey. You really are fearless.”

I scoffed. “Just stupid.”

“Professor Snape,” she said slowly. “Even hearing it from your mouth I can’t believe it. I thought after auld Bill, and that fine thing Kenzo Kitano, that you liked the pretty boys.”

“I suppose I learned my lesson.”

“There’s a morbid part of me that’s terribly curious. What is it like to, you know…with _him_?”

In spite of everything, _because_ of everything, I burst into laughter.

In a rush she said, “He was so deathly frightening in class and, I don’t know, I can’t imagine him doing such things…with a _woman_. And you such a wee thing. You look like your bones would break if any man got his hands on you, and him so strict…”

If only she knew.

“Oh he was strict. How detailed do you want me to be, pal? We weren’t exactly cleaning cauldrons here.”

Her pale face flushed furiously. “Merlin’s beard, forget I ever did ask.”

“Yet you have done, and now I’ll have to tell you.” I looked around. “Go on, fetch me my wand.”

“Your wand—whatever for?”

“Well I’ll need something to show for comparison, won’t I?” She screamed and I howled.

“You’re horrid!” She swatted at me.

“You’ve heard the one about the man with the big nose? There once was a—”

“Out of my house!” she shrieked, clutching her sides. Tears streamed down my face. The laughter hurt. It felt good.

It had been so long.

“Serves me right,” she said when we’d finally caught our breaths.

“To be quite honest,” I said, “I don’t believe I saw him scuddy once.”

She peered at me. “You’re joking?”

“Not in the least.”

The most stripped down I’d ever seen him was in his kitchen at Spinner’s End wearing just the vested union suit. His thin arms weren’t much to look at, but he was strong enough to hoist me about and for the rest he had his unparalleled magic. I never questioned his preference to stay dressed. Across the back of his shoulders were the rough, faded ropes of scars that could only be made by what was used to discipline animals.

Chiara saw me grow quiet. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Don’t be silly. I can’t pretend my past didn’t happen. Every last bit of it.”

The island had taught me that much.

“Absolutely right,” she agreed. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You know about Remus.”

“A passing kiss? If only all our transgressions were so chaste.”

Chiara had met Remus Lupin midway through our time at Hogwarts, the first werewolf she knew and, for a time, the only. It wasn’t in her shy nature to make her feelings known, but by our seventh year she’d developed such a mad crush on the man that she’d kissed him in the Forbidden Forest, shocking him and most of all, herself. He’d kindly and gently turned her down, but it had been so horribly embarrassing she hadn’t another kiss until her husband.

We’d written that episode off to teenage infatuation and vowed never to reveal it to Tonks. Tonks had already had such a difficult go of it convincing Remus they could be a pair, there was no need to threaten that tenuous bond. Chiara and her husband had even attended Tonks and Remus’ wedding.

That was the photo Mrs. Tonks used at the funeral. I hadn’t been sure if I should go—what did the world know about Severus and me? Had Harry Potter managed to convince the Order of what really happened?

But Chiara had insisted. I hadn’t been able to see Tonks married, I should be given the chance to say goodbye to our old friend who had once saved my life on an eve that changed everything.

So I did go, but I stayed in the back, letting the lightning boy—the hero—and his army of little Dumbledores have their grief loudly. Under a dark veil I was so unobtrusive hardly any humans noticed me, not even my cousin, who sobbed into that Corner boy’s shoulder off and on the entire way. The most attention I drew was from the small clan of werewolves Remus lived with during the times he fled society. The pack had split when some fought with Voldemort. These were the ones on our side and when I passed, I heard a murmured, “The beta’s mate.”

The beta was Voldemort’s right hand man. Severus. I wondered how much danger I had actually been in without my awareness.

It may seem soon for us to be speaking so casually of those souls passed, but we’d agreed that day to always speak of Tonks and the others as if they were still with us, because they were. They had been our friends, our protectors, and they deserved to be in our thoughts as much as we wanted. They’d lived a life rich with meaning, full of laughter and struggles and pranks—so many pranks. All of us from the class of 1991 had agreed to honor not the war but our people, the lives they had shared with us, not simply their deaths.

“You know me mum raised me on her own,” Chiara said now.

I had always wondered about the Irish Obliviator with the Italian name who had to “persuade” the Muggles to sell a home to my Chinese parents.

Caoimhe Dunne was born to Muggle parents and graduated a Hufflepuff like Chiara. While abroad in the north of Italy, she fell wildly for a dashing Durmstrang graduate who swept her off her feet that summer and left her with only a broken heart and a rounding belly.

“She couldn’t stay in Kildare in those times—it was too much, especially for Muggles. She set out for Dublin all by herself, where she was able to tell a new tale.”

Because Caoimhe was Muggleborn, the Durmstrang boy didn’t want anything to do with the baby. In Dublin, Caoimhe took his name Lobosca and reinvented herself as a widow. In a way she was: the mourning was not a lie. Her ability to weave a new story to cover the old was the very skill that eventually brought her to the Ministry as an Obliviator.

I understood now why Chiara had always pressed me to move on from Bill. I’d caught a glimpse of him and the Veela at the funeral, in the front row with the Order. It felt a lifetime ago that his red hair had seemed like the sun to me and I, destined to revolve around it.

While the rest of the funeral attendees gathered for repast, I bid farewell to Mrs. Tonks and made to slip out. On my way to the fireplace I nearly collided with a willowy, tall figure. The young Mrs. William Weasley clutched a delicate hand to her plush Angora shawl. Her expensive perfume wafted cloyingly over, something Parisian that my former French attaché used to blow her pay on.

Everyone nattered on about how humble the Veela had turned out to be, living in that modest cottage with only four bedrooms for two people. No one mentions the price of waterfront property on the south English coastline, nor the fact that Bill bought out the two lots on either side as well, for a whopping five-parcel beachfront estate like something straight out of American Muggle movies.

For a moment, we faced each other in the Tonks’ sitting room. The enormous Goblin-mined diamond on her ring finger winked obscenely at me.

“Madame Weasley,” I said. “How do you do? You look well.”

“Ambassador,” she replied. “And you.”

With our niceties out of the way, we made to pass each other. She turned suddenly back. “I have not been so well.”

I also turned. Surprised, I said, “Pardon?”

“I have had a disappointment of late. I thought zat zere will be one more for our family, but it was a false, eh…”

“A false alarm.”

“Yes. A false alarm.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I said automatically, letting my diplomatic training take over for my frozen brain. Of the most words we’d ever spoken to one another, why was she using them to tell me this?

“It eez _difficile_ ,” she said, with an uncustomary carefulness to her usual blunt complaints, “to let go of a baby. Even one that did not exist. But was maybe… _un rêve._ ”

She finished, looked at me with meaning, and I, I understood with perfect clarity now. I looked back at her, the woman who would now be the mother to Bill’s children, speaking to me, the woman who had once almost been.

In two strides I reached her and flung my arms around her slender waist. After a stunned second, I felt her thin arms encircle my shoulders with a surprisingly firm grip.

Against her angular shoulder, I said, “Yes. It is.” Then I swallowed and said no more, because I was crying.

When we extracted ourselves, I patted my pockets for a handkerchief. The Veela held a daintily embroidered silk to me.

“Ambassador.”

“Adeline,” I said, taking it and dabbing my face.

“You can call me Fleur. ‘Madame Weasley’, it sound like a _grand-mère_ , no? So old.”

I handed back the handkerchief. “Oh you’ll never be old, Fleur. You’ll be stunning for the foreseeable future.”

“Ah, well. I think you will not be old, too. Because you are…”

“Asian,” I nodded, “I know.”

_“Exactement.”_

“Well, if I can’t be a Veela, Asian isn’t so bad.”

“You are leetle and funny. I understand why Bill liked you.”

I shook my head, laughing. Funerals. They do things to people. If Fleur weren’t a Veela I wondered if she’d get away with a fraction of the things that came out of her month.

“Boys. Zey are such boys, no?”

I could only sigh. “ _Oui_.”

“We can only rely on each other.”

The French, like the Taiwanese, had a way of embracing their femininity that allowed us to endure what loving these “boys” put us through. Bill’s young wife had understood. It was the work we women did amongst each other, the healing we provided that the boys couldn’t, in our wisdom and our bonds. 

Thus my month at Chiara’s became a sort of chrysalis, a transitional space in which I prepared to move out of the hibernation of exile and back into the land of the living. By June, the Ministry was ready to send Ambassadors out again. The Aurors never did question me. Either it was too uncouth for anyone to confront me directly, or newly-appointed Auror Harry Potter’s continued insistence on Snape’s heroics were enough cause to reinstate me to my post.

It could also be that, once again, there was simply no one else with the same qualifications available. Cho could barely speak Chinese and she would have rather gone to work as an Azkaban guard than live in U.C.N. They would have had to appoint my father in my stead, and he was enjoying his bucolic days in Kaohsiung so much he was considering early retirement.

Or perhaps, it was time to stop discounting my efforts. Perhaps they asked me to resume the post because I was, after all, the best woman for the job.

So it was that the first of June found me sliding my new embassy portkey through the gleaming, rebuilt International Gateway. Once it magically stamped my exit, I took my place on the dais, smoothed my white U.C.N. cloak and whispered,

“ _Portus_.”


	34. Stallion

16 Feb 1999

Firecrackers were already ringing and popping through the streets of Taipei as I wrapped my gifts in preparation to _Huí niángjiā_ for Lunar New Year. Returning to my mother’s home was much easier this year as she was just on the other end of the country.

Typically there would be chain of women each following their mothers to her mother’s home until we reached the last deceased, but my maternal grandmother had escaped China, where relations remained dicey with the rest of U.C.N. until the end of the Second Wizarding War. As such, our maternal line had broken the tradition for decades until I became Ambassador and started it up again. My mum still found it funny that her British daughter turned out to be the one bringing the Changs back to our roots.

To be quite honest, it had begun as a job requirement, first for the ICF’s cover in China, then as Ambassador to adapt to my host country’s customs. I’d loved the exoticism as only a foreign-born brat could. Yet over the years, that inkling of a bone-deep familiarity had grown until now I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t live this way.

Now I joined the hordes of families making our pilgrimage with one advantage: while the Má guā MRT overflowed with underground riders in every direction, I simply grabbed my packages and ducked into my fireplace. I emerged in Kaohsiung to the same muffled sound of firecrackers as Má guā neighbors on the other side of the hill sent up wisps of smoke.

Between the cleaning and preparations, the day went by quickly. After supper had been put away, I wandered up the hill to watch the Má guā down below celebrate. A group of children had come up their side and was weaving in and out of a sparse copse of trees, throwing what looked like bits of paper and detritus at each other in a way that only kids find entertaining.

A girl who looked around five years of age stopped a distance from me, peering at me with the curiosity and suspicion of a child who was smart enough to know better, but friendly enough to welcome new friends. I smiled and she inched closer, holding up a torn bit of red paper. It was from a money envelope, probably one carrying a coin for the children. I searched my pockets and came up with the crinkly wrapper of a sucking sweet, which I held up in turn. Standing in front of me now, she held out her hand and I dropped the red and gold foil into it. After examining it, she raised it in triumph to her siblings and cousins, who came running to investigate.

Having determined I was not only safe, but a possible source of treasure, they crowded around me, rubbing their dirty hands all over my embassy cloak and exclaiming over the pink insignia embroidered on the back.

“Why are you wearing this costume?” she asked.

“Because it’s cold.”

She nodded as if that were a perfectly acceptable answer. An older boy who was clearly her brother asked, “Do you wear this every day?”

“Mostly when I travel. It’s a traveling cloak.”

“Traveling cloak,” he repeated. A few others echoed him. “I wear my jacket but it’s brown.”

“Mine is too!” another boy piped up. “ _Ma ma_ says I can’t wear white because I’ll make it dirty. And because it’s bad luck. Your _Ma ma_ lets you wear white?”

“She does,” I nodded. “It’s white so that you can’t see me when I fly over Siberia.”

“Where is Siberia?” a quiet girl asked.

“In the north where Russia is. It’s very cold, a lot of snow.”

“Ohhhh.” They all nodded as if this made quite a deal of sense. “I’ve never seen snow,” one murmured.

“What do you fly with, an airplane?”

“Of course not! Obviously a broom.”

“I want to fly a broom!” the first girl declared.

Everyone followed suit. “I want to! I want to!”

I laughed. I’ve found with the very young, particularly in parts of U.C.N. where Má guā seem mostly amenable to myths and legend, telling the absolute truth turned out to be the easiest way to account for discrepancies in my behavior or appearance. If only that worked as well with adult wizards.

Suddenly the first girl shrieked and pointed behind me. I whipped around, my wand already out, as the other children turned. The quiet girl started crying.

A large, silvery shape moved through the copse. Wand pointed, I squinted at it, trying to make out the shape behind the dark branches. It appeared in no hurry, slipping silently between the trees, until it finally emerged at the top of the hill.

My wand hand lowered. Several kids gasped.

A massive white stallion stood atop the crest, pawing the ground with its translucent hoof. It huffed, breath misting against the star-filled, moonless sky.

“What is it?” the brother asked wondrously.

I almost said I didn’t know. Obviously I did know what it was, but I didn’t understand it. This time I couldn’t tell them it was a Patronus, so I settled for, “It’s a horse. A very big horse.”

“Is it a ghost?” Someone said in a tremulous voice.

“No,” I quickly said. “It’s friendly. It’s when you remember something really happy, and your happiness becomes an animal that you can see, even if it’s not really there. Like…an illusion. It’s a _Huànjǐng_.”

“My happiness is like…a duck made of candy!” said the brother.

“Mine is a cat,” said his sister.

I smiled. Perhaps Má guā understood a bit of magic, too. They all named their happiness until the stallion gave a last toss of its mane and galloped down the far side of the hill where it faded from sight.

“What is that?” The smaller boy pointed at my wand, still in my hand.

“It’s um, it’s my firecracker.” With that, I lifted my wand and whispered, “ _Aurumillious minima_!”

Tiny gold sparks sizzled at the tip of my wand, looking exactly like a Má guā sparkler.

“Can I?” the boy reached for it.

“No no, it’s very dangerous for children. But tell me where to go and we can walk around with it.”

So they led me through the trees and we wove amongst them, the little ones chasing after me as I carried my glittering wand, remembering the Halloween that started me on this path that eventually led me here, playing with Má guā children in U.C.N. and visited by a Patronus I couldn’t comprehend.

Because it was mine.


	35. Peace

2 March 1999

The best place to view the Yuan Xiao Festival is perched on a broom high up in the sky, just as the lanterns are released into the air.

Sitting thirty meters in the air invisible under a Demiguise cloak, I watched as the white lanterns glowed orange from the lit joss paper inside. As each lantern soared past me, I could feel the power of the wishes written across the fabric. _True love to be theirs. Full marks on uni entrance exams. Better health for their families. A son to carry the name._ Each hope carrying its own little light as it drifted by me. The longer I lived in U.C.N., the more I was convinced Má guā had their own magic.

As I held my own lantern, I recalled the ability I once had to believe in something wonderful, something great. _Finding my brother. Being loved by Bill. Saving Severus._

One of them came true.

I watched the Má guā dreams fill the sky as I put a hand to my heart. It had been through more than I thought it would in less than twenty-six years. It had grown used to disappointment. What could it possibly want now, this heart that had grown afraid to hope?

With the tip of my wand, I wrote a single word in English and tapped it to rewrite itself in Chinese. Even after nearly nine years in U.C.N. I could barely read or write. It had been too easy to use magic to translate everything, and the embassy provided pairs of _Interprespecs_ to Ambassadors so we could quickly scan treaties and official documents. I ended up wearing mine anytime I left the embassy. It makes quite a difference whether one orders fried tofu or fried cockroaches.

The word I wrote was one I had seen often, particularly during the War.

 _Peace_.

I had spent so much of the previous years focused on someone else. Now this was the one thing I wanted for myself.

The only thing I could conceive of that would set me free.

Because I hadn’t been able to fulfill my promise in its entirety. I hadn’t let go.

Just like Severus, the spectre of my past remained in full color. Wryly, I realized I once again related to a man I loved, years later. Perhaps I was destined to repeat this cycle of wasted longing.

Well, I consoled myself, at least I had loved the best. The truth of Severus’ deeds had finally begun to ripple beyond the Order, beyond the Ministry, and now beyond Britain. Not everyone was convinced, even to this day, but on the whole, he was considered one of the greatest heroes of the Wizarding twentieth century.

With a swirl of my wand, I released the lantern into the night air and watched it magically join the others as they rose steadily up towards the orb of the full moon, hanging pregnant and heavy over me.

I never did figure out why my own Patronus pranced onto the hill two weeks ago on the new moon. Since then, I caught a glimpse of it again at the far end of the street one night, as I visited the Wizarding Night Market. I’d followed it through the crowd to the end of the alley, where it faded in front of the darkened window of a broom shop.

And now, it was looking me in the face. Shrouded from Má guā sight by the flotilla of lanterns, the large stallion had cantered across the sky straight to me. Having caught my attention, it now trotted around me, tail swishing, until the creature evaporated. In its place a lantern floated down.

Down.

I caught the enchanted lantern quickly before it descended past my broom. There was a slip of paper hanging from a string. When I plucked it, the lantern floated up again to join the others, just as normal as ever.

It was a receipt, no item or cost, just dated to tomorrow. To the same broom shop by the Night Market.

* * *

5 March 1999

I’d already launched my new broom into a steep dive before I’d even opened my eyes. The Firebolt responded with such precision it felt like an extension of my body. That little Potter boy was a lucky git to have played Quidditch on one of these at Hogwarts.

Land rushed up to meet me, panning out into a thorny tangle of forbidding jungle and an angry coastline of jagged, black rock that cruelly broke every wave upon it. The crashing water and violent spray were so realistic my heart leapt into my throat and I forced myself to keep hurtling downwards. A second later, I broke through the Legilimens Line: the island recognized me.

I coasted gently onto the now unmarred beach, the water as placid and docile as a Kneazle kitten. My boots touched down on the white sand, my white robes fluttering in the ocean breeze around my tired legs, astride this extravagant gift that had been waiting at the broom shop two days ago.

“They told me this model is the quickest, yet it appears to have taken its time bringing you here.”

I had to close my eyes for a moment. I had tried every day to walk forward with my life, knowing I would never hear this voice again. Yet its deep, resonant timbre was still so painfully familiar.

“I’m afraid some of us have jobs,” I said.

He had come level to me on the beach and we faced each other, our shoes inches from the lapping water.

His hair was longer, enough to tie back with what looked like the frayed bits of a rope end. Through whatever means he remained as pale as ever and it comforted me. It would be too disconcerting if he were greatly changed. I was unbearably pleased that, despite the warmth, he was dressed in the same white shirtsleeves and black trousers. I would bet Galleons he wore his union suit underneath.

“Ever the obsession with my undergarments.”

Of course his Legilimency would have grown even more powerful. It would likely surpass what I could Occlude as long as he stayed on the island.

“I brought you something,” I said. From my pocket, I withdrew our wands and held his out, handle first.

He reached past it and his hand closed over mine. The feel of the calloused, burning skin wrapping around my fingers, still cold from the flight, brought fast tears to my eyes.

Quickly he drew back, taking his wand and several steps backwards as if he couldn’t be near.

“I should have—sooner,” he stammered uncharacteristically. “But I thought I could not deserve to…I knew I didn’t deserve…”

His eyes met mine.

Wordlessly, we lifted our wands high and swung a simultaneous arc, wide, over our heads. Two massive white stallions burst forth and pounded silently across the sky until they met overhead, where they reared in a majestic salute before thundering out onto the open sea, their hooves skimming the spraying foam as they soared with twin shimmers into the sun.

Instantly islanders descended upon us.

"What are you two doing with wands?” they roared.

"I'm sorry––”

I put my hands up just as my erstwhile lover was saying, “I warned you, this is a troublemaker,” and pointing at me. “Sneaking contraband when the rules were perfectly clear is quite like her.”

One of the men snatched our wands with an offended glare and disappeared them in a puff of smoke.

“And you said _this_ one was the spy,” the islander said huffily, jerking his thumb at my tell-tale, before shaking his head and tramping back up the beach.

“She never listened to a word I said, even as Headmaster.”

I threw the broom into the sand. “Marooned on a nonexistent island, and in nearly a year's time you've managed to grow only the more insufferable.”

“Come here.”

He wasn't joking anymore. The low voice of command and dark desire had once again arisen.

"Now."

I ran to him as I had never done before, raced across the sand and leapt into his arms, my legs wrapping around his waist without a thought, his hands coming under my rear to support me.

He locked eyes with me and I felt a warmth from him I had never experienced before: a rich and unfamiliar sensation that was the clear, liquid openness of his inner mind.

I saw the Evans girl; I saw her as he did, in its entirety. She had been his first friend, like Rowan and I to each other. They diverged as they grew, like so many friends do. Even so, he loved her dearly, purely for this, a first love quite different from mine for Bill. A love that immortalizes a person into a sort of unreachable symbol of an innocence too far to remember.

Perhaps at one time he’d dreamed it different for them, considered her in the light of love between a grown man and woman. It may even be she thought along the same lines. But that time never came to be for them. And that moment, like all moments, missed or realized, was gone.

And I understood then, at last, what I was to him. Not a fragment of a lost story to be frozen on a plinth, untouchable. But someone here on the sand, alive, within his hands. Someone he could reach. More importantly, someone who could reach him.

He remembered my dark eyes that night in the Shrieking Shack, what I said to him in my mind before I ported him away. And he was certain that, more than the potion, those words had saved his life, and then healed him.

Still in his arms, I brought my fingers to his neck and traced the scars of the wound, his final one from the War.

“Say it,” I said.

“Adeline,” he gamely answered.

“Yes, my Prince.”

And I am rewarded: a rarity of treasure no curse-breaker could ever loot—

a tiny, barely perceptible curve at the corners of his stern mouth.

Severus Snape smiled at me.

**The End**

_Illustrated by[Zephyr_Zult](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zephyr_Zult)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well...not quite the end...


	36. Epilogue

2006

Severus stayed on the island. At first, it was to give people time to believe he had killed Dumbledore on Albus’ own orders. But as the years went on, it became apparent that he lingered because it was the first time in his entire life he didn’t have to serve a master.

Was I nervous to leave him on a tropical island full of ripening, young Polynesian witches with a knack for Legilimency?

Tremendously.

I had been young, after all, when we began, and I worried I had inadvertently given him a taste for it. While he guarded like a tomb his chronicles with the Death Eaters*, I did come to suspect a certain predilection in him. Muggles weren’t the only white blokes with a fetish. And who knows; one of these island witches might take a liking to a crabby man entering middle-age with salt-and-pepper streaks in his hair, who still had the ability to leave a woman feeling like she had the Jelly-Legs Jinx.

Severus caught me out early on. “I assure you, you grossly overestimate my appeal to the female populace,” he had remarked after taking one look at me and seeing my thoughts. “Not to mention how very average I am as a Legilimens in this community.”

“Well,” I had said, “don’t drink anything suspicious-smelling.”

He had suggested more than once that I sell up and join him on Huànjǐng. Between my salary and his having spent hardly a Knut of his earnings from Hogwarts, we could afford it. To underscore his seriousness, he even bought something quite impressive with what must have been the largest transaction to come out of his account. How the rumors flew when the Snape vault at Gringotts showed a burst of activity and, a week on, something tasteful but obvious appeared on my finger.

I wore it, but I stayed in U.C.N. It wasn’t the money that made me retain my position. Though it meant I only saw him weekends, something about the arrangement worked. I told him thirty-three was too young to pack it in and retire.

But really, I think both of us were finally learning to live as people who were free.

* * *

People, Wizard and Muggle alike, don’t understand what war does to a person unless they have undergone it. George Weasley had his heart split in two. No magic in the world can repair that. The little lightning boy, no matter how infuriating he had been, would be wracked with a guilt that informed the way he ran the Auror department.

While we all carried scars both physical and magical, Severus and I had inadvertently found a method of healing as well.

Moments before I spirited him away, Severus had given the last known memory of Lily Potter to her son, a place we three all agreed it belonged. For the first time, Severus did not have this regret hanging around his neck any longer. We hadn’t realized the impact just this one strand of freedom would have, not only on Severus, but on our relationship. It was like a cloud had lifted from his eyes when he looked at me—a small, but palpable one.

Soon, the storm of his mind would abate even further.

On an early summer day, Harry Potter visited my office while I was in London. Word from above was, he was about to rise above my pay; not bad for a little boy who messed about my cousin, gave Severus years of sleepless nights and, finally, gotten him nearly killed.

He shuffled about for a while. “How…how is Cho?”

“Well. Living quite a Muggle life as I hear it.”

“Excellent…that’s, just…excellent.”

If anyone suspects I was present that night at the Battle of Hogwarts, no one has come forth. I’m glad for it. It was Cho’s moment of glory; her avenging of Cedric, her first love. She deserved it, after she told me about the way the youngest girl Weasley usurped her at every turn if my cousin so much as glanced at Harry’s shadow. It seems Changs and Weasleys were destined to cross over one another repeatedly.

“How is Ginevra?” I asked.

“Tired,” said Harry. “She’s due again by year’s end.”

The prodigious Weasleys. “Congratulations. Or, is it luck?”

“Both.” He laughed nervously.

Harry brushed non-existent dust off the corner of my desk until he finally asked, stammeringly, if I had more of Severus’ memories, perhaps in a Pensieve?

I suppressed a smile. They were in my fiancé’s own Pensieve on the island.

“I believe I can access them,” I said.

“Would you be…if it’s not terribly insensitive of me; I’m aware James is not even two, but at some point he’ll want to know of his namesake. I’ve collected every memory of my father that I have…it’s not much, just some wavery Mirror of Erised stuff—James will be much too young to see all that War, not that I ever want him to. And with Remus gone, as well as…what I’m saying is, I’d like very much to show him his grandfather one day.”

This time I smiled warmly. “I have no doubt Sev—Professor Snape would want James to have them.”

When next I was in London, Harry recounted the event. Before dawn on James Sirius’ second birthday, a whoosh sounded in the Potters’ yard. I had sent the package via hippogriff, because it was so precious. Harry removed the cloaking charm, retrieved the gift, and set the spell again before sending the creature off. James’ tousled brown hair was still whipping in the wind from the wings when they carried him back inside. Harry concluded by telling me that they simply couldn’t wait: James played the memories over and over.

“Did he. Should I fear for his future classmates at Hogwarts?” I asked.

Harry pushed his glasses up his nose. “The, ahem, unsavory bits the Marauders did had been mysteriously wiped.”

“Really?”

“What was left was stitched together, rather seamlessly, I might add. A young wizard would have no idea they’d been tampered with at all. It was quite lovely.”

“You don’t say.” I had no idea Severus had done that.

He paused in the doorway of my office. “Adeline.”

“Harry.”

“Would you thank him for me?”

I laughed automatically and pointed my quill at Severus’ unmoving Headmaster portrait that hung in both my and Harry’s offices. “You can thank him yourself.”

“I’d prefer you did it. From me directly.”

I looked up. Harry’s gaze dropped to my ring. He gave a small smile.

Though Severus and my engagement was becoming the worst-kept secret in the Wizarding world, I had never openly confirmed it. Even my cousin didn’t want to ask, looking queasy whenever she saw the ring and all but clutching her squib child tighter.

But I could trust the Boy Who Lived.

“He’ll be glad to hear it,” I said.

“And tell him, I owe more to him than I’ll ever be able to repay. And for what you did so that his efforts weren’t in vain. I won’t forget either.”

I don’t believe he did. A month after that conversation, a card arrived for me at the embassy in U.C.N., white vellum beautifully embossed with gold leaf. As a watercolor pram rolled magically across its surface, a periwinkle ribbon unfurled behind it announcing the birth of Harry’s second son:

_Albus Severus Potter_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Adeline may not want to know about Severus' days of infamy, but luckily _we_ have Death Eater Chronicles in our collection :)


End file.
